Auburn Manufacturing, Inc. (B-423308; B-423308.2)

You should not care.

Category: Buy American Act, price evaluation

Date: 26 March 2025

URL: https://www.gao.gov/products/b-423308

Auburn Manufacturing, Inc., a woman-owned small business, protested the Defense Logistics Agency’s (DLA) award of a contract to Elite Textile Trading LLC for silica glass cloth, arguing that Elite’s offered product was a foreign end item—allegedly from China—and thus ineligible for award under DFARS 252.225-7001. Auburn further claimed DLA should have either rejected the proposal or applied a 50 percent evaluation factor under DFARS pricing rules. GAO dismissed both arguments: the first for legal insufficiency and the second as untimely.

Foreign end products are not barred, just disfavored: Auburn’s principal argument—that DLA violated the Buy American Act by awarding to a vendor offering a Chinese-origin item—misconstrued DFARS 252.225-7001, which merely establishes a preference, not a prohibition. GAO reiterated that DLA may lawfully accept foreign end products so long as vendors disclose their origin.

Late-raised price factor argument fails on timing: Auburn attempted to reframe its protest after DLA’s dismissal request by asserting that DLA failed to apply the required 50 percent evaluation factor. GAO deemed this argument untimely under its rules, as Auburn could have raised the issue when it filed its initial protest but did not.

Protest dismissed: Auburn failed to state a valid legal basis for its protest and raised a key argument too late for GAO to consider. No regulatory violation occurred.

Digest

1. Protest challenging agency’s decision to award a contract to an offeror who quoted a foreign end product is dismissed for failure to state a valid basis of protest where the protester fails to demonstrate that the agency has violated a procurement statute or regulation.
2. Protest challenging agency’s alleged failure to apply a price evaluation factor to a foreign end product quotation is dismissed as untimely where the protester knew the basis of its protest allegation at the time it filed its initial protest but failed to timely raise the allegation.