GSA Demands AbilityOne Audit After Finding Mislabeled Chinese Tech
The mandatory procurement program stands accused of selling foreign-made products labeled as American, leaving agencies including DoD with no choice but to buy them.
TL;DR
GSA Administrator Ed Forst ordered the AbilityOne Commission to audit every product sold through GSA procurement platforms by November 12, after discovering technology products labeled "country of origin: USA" that were manufactured in China, Taiwan, and Vietnam. Federal agencies (including DoD) are required by law to procure from AbilityOne, making the mislabeling both a Buy American Act violation and a national security vulnerability. GSA also flagged price markups of up to 55% and an executive-compensation gap: nonprofit CEOs earn $500,000 to $1 million while disabled workers average $33,000.
The core finding is straightforward and damning: products on GSA procurement platforms labeled as American-made, sold through a program that federal agencies are legally required to buy from, were actually manufactured in China. GSA Administrator Ed Forst's letter to the AbilityOne Commission demands answers by November 12.
Forst's letter isn't a polite request. It directs the commission to audit every item on its product list for accurate country-of-origin labeling, verify pricing and sourcing, and document how it will conduct continuous compliance reviews going forward. For DoD and other national security agencies, that's not just a labeling error, it's a supply-chain integrity problem they had no mechanism to avoid.
The letter also surfaces financial concerns that have dogged the program for years. GSA cites product price markups of up to 55% and points out that the average disabled worker earns $33,000 annually, while the CEOs of the nonprofits that operate the program (SourceAmerica and National Industries for the Blind) take home between $500,000 and $1 million. The agency connects inflated pricing to "curiously high executive compensation" and references prior False Claims Act lawsuits, though it stops short of alleging current fraud.
An anonymous former federal official pushed back sharply, calling the letter "an attack on the AbilityOne program" and denying the commission sources Chinese products inappropriately. "The AbilityOne Commission and its partners source from the same sources as anyone in the commercial market," the official told Federal News Network, attributing the scrutiny to political appointees who arrived with preconceptions.
The commission itself issued a carefully neutral statement, pledging to review the letter and noting it has "been working closely with GSA on a wide range of issues." That response sidesteps the specific allegations entirely.
The stakes are higher than a single audit cycle. The program's mandatory procurement status (the very feature that makes the country-of-origin problem so acute) has survived decades of administrations. But a finding that it systematically mislabeled foreign products while federal buyers had no opt-out makes the program's structural immunity harder to defend. The November deadline gives the commission roughly two months to produce the audit. What it finds will determine whether this is a labeling correction or something closer to an existential challenge.
Published ·Updated ·Deep Fathom