Amazon and Walmart, give us a Made In USA filter.
Many Americans actively seek out products made in the United States. Amazon and Walmart give shoppers countless ways to narrow their searches. It is time they added a Made In USA filter, too.
The poll measured demand for American-made products. It did not ask respondents whether they wanted a Made In USA filter; that proposal is Americana Gecko’s own.
of Americans say they seek out American-made products very or somewhat often.
Retail Brew / Harris Poll · July 2022 · 1,986 U.S. adultsAmericans were looking. Origin was not always clear.
- Always 8%
- Most of the time 31%
- Sometimes 37%
- Rarely 19%
- Never 5%
39%were consistently aware—always or most of the time.
Gallup / Bentley University · May 5–12, 2025 · nationally representative Gallup Panel surveyThe surveys show a clear gap: many Americans want to buy American-made goods, yet most do not consistently know where products are made before buying.
71% cited American jobs and workers
57% cited the U.S. economy
The FTC warned Amazon and Walmart about third-party sellers’ Made In USA claims.
On July 8, 2025, the Federal Trade Commission sent warning letters to Amazon and Walmart about third-party listings that appeared to make deceptive U.S.-origin claims.
The letters asked Amazon and Walmart to monitor, identify and correct misleading claims on their sites. Walmart said it had zero tolerance for noncompliant products and removed them when identified.
These were warning letters—not findings that Amazon or Walmart had broken the law. The FTC was flagging apparent misconduct by third-party sellers and reminding both companies how federal origin rules apply to listings on their sites.
Federal guidance does not require most products sold in the United States to carry a Made In USA label or disclose their amount of domestic content. But once a marketer chooses to make a U.S.-origin claim, that claim must be truthful and supported by evidence.
- 01Final assembly or processing in the United States
- 02All significant processing in the United States
- 03All or virtually all components or ingredients made and sourced domestically
A product that does not meet that standard may still use a truthful qualified claim—for example, “Assembled in USA from imported parts.” The qualifying words must clearly tell shoppers what part of the product was made or assembled here.
Columbia tested AI shopping assistants on Made In USA claims.
One year after the FTC letters, Columbia Law School’s Center for Law and the Economy published Made in America, Hidden by AI. In the 46-page report, authors Erie Meyer and Zachary Harris tested Amazon’s Alexa for Shopping and Walmart’s Sparky. They examined whether the AI assistants could identify questionable U.S.-origin claims in product listings on both websites.
Columbia found that the shopping assistants could identify some questionable Made In USA claims. But Alexa for Shopping and Sparky did not consistently show shoppers that information.
One Amazon listing contradicted itself.
The most concrete example was the Golden Fox Work Boots 6-inch American Heritage Moc Toe Wedge Boot for Construction, under Amazon parent listing ID (ASIN) B0787FRCGB. Columbia’s screenshot shows the selected Rust variation, ASIN B08WWS36WV. “Made In USA” appears at the end of the product name. Under Product Details, the origin reads “Imported.”
One wording change produced a different answer.
Columbia then asked Alexa about fly-fishing reels using nearly equivalent prompts. Asked for reels “made in usa,” Alexa said it did not have access to the information and directed the shopper to product pages or sellers. Asked for reels “made in china,” the assistant produced a comparison based on brand-sourcing patterns, manufacturing research and product-page data—even while acknowledging that the displayed listings did not explicitly identify China in an origin field.
The researchers rephrased the question, replacing “Made In USA” with “in USA.” Alexa then provided a detailed comparison of fishing reels it described as genuinely made in the United States, including products manufactured in Idaho, Colorado, California and Florida.
Alexa said it could not answer “Made In USA.” When Columbia changed the words to “in USA,” it answered.
Columbia believed Alexa may have been blocked from answering the exact phrase “Made In USA.”
Amazon and Walmart offered hundreds of filters—but none for origin.
In a single-category snapshot of searches for dolls, Columbia counted 29 filter categories and approximately 269 options on Amazon, and 23 categories and roughly 299 options on Walmart.1 Neither Amazon nor Walmart offered a Country of Origin or Made In USA filter.
29 categories
≈269 options
0 origin filters
23 categories
≈299 options
0 origin filters
The count reflects the filters available when Columbia conducted its review. Amazon and Walmart may change those filters over time.
A Walmart listing gave conflicting origin information.
Columbia’s principal Walmart product example was the Thorogood 8-inch Front Zip Oblique Steel Toe Boot, style 804-6446. The preserved listing described the station boots as made in the USA while its country-of-origin field said Imported.
Amazon denied intentionally withholding origin information. Walmart did not respond.
Amazon told News 12 that it strives to display manufacturing information when manufacturers or third-party sellers provide it. The company denied intentionally withholding country-of-origin information and said it continues to improve Alexa for Shopping. Amazon also said sellers must provide accurate information and that it acts when it identifies policy violations.
Walmart did not immediately comment to Reuters about the report and did not respond to News 12.
The Wall Street Journal Leadership Institute later performed its own shopping-assistant tests and reported similarly inconsistent or incomplete answers. Small changes in phrasing sometimes produced better results.
We then checked what shoppers could still see for themselves.
We checked Amazon and Walmart ourselves.
We revisited Columbia’s examples, read the FTC records and tested Amazon and Walmart as shoppers would. We did not repeat every experiment. Our goal was simple: see which findings we could reproduce and which listings had changed or disappeared.
The same Amazon listing still showed conflicting origin claims.
We found the same conflict on a Golden Fox Amazon page that was still indexed online. The product name included “American Heritage” and ended with Made In USA. The Origin field said Imported.
Other online pages did not settle the boot’s origin. Another Amazon page for the same parent listing said Made In USA, and Golden Fox had a Made In USA category on its website. Neither source confirmed the origin of the exact Rust variation Columbia documented.
Amazon’s page contradicted itself. We still could not verify where the boot was actually made.
We would need more evidence—such as a photograph of the label on that exact boot, a manufacturer statement for that model or import records—to know which Amazon field was wrong. We did not have that evidence. We can report the conflicting listing, but we cannot say the boot was foreign-made.
Alexa treated Made In USA differently from China and Korea.
We wanted to see whether Alexa handled the same origin question consistently when only the country changed. In one Alexa for Shopping session, we entered three short prompts: “Made in China,” “Made In USA” and “Made in Korea.”
For China, Alexa asked whether we wanted Chinese-made products, wanted to avoid them or meant something else. For the United States, Alexa said it did not have access to the information and directed us to the product page or seller. For Korea, Alexa again asked a helpful follow-up question and suggested categories such as skincare, electronics and food.
Clarification offered
Information unavailable
Clarification offered
The specific Walmart pages we checked were unavailable. The origin filter was still missing.
On August 22, 2026, we checked Columbia’s Walmart URL, a second listing URL and Walmart’s on-site search for style 804-6446. Both URLs returned unavailable pages, and the search returned zero exact matches. Walmart showed other Thorogood boots instead.
That check cannot tell us whether Walmart removed, corrected, replaced or otherwise changed the original listing. Columbia’s screenshot preserves the earlier title-and-origin conflict. Our check establishes only that we could not retrieve those specific pages or find the exact model on Walmart that day.
We then repeated the dolls search and again found 23 named filter categories. A shopper could narrow more than 1,000 results by character, theme, doll type, gender, color, material, product line, size, skin tone, piece count, retailer, gifting and other attributes. Country of Origin was not among them.
named filter categories in our live Walmart search
individual options counted in Columbia’s snapshot
Country of Origin or Made In USA filters
Federal rules govern whether Made In USA claims are truthful; they do not require Amazon, Walmart or any other online shopping site to offer a Made In USA filter. On March 13, 2026, President Trump directed the FTC to consider rules under which an online shopping site’s failure to establish procedures for verifying country-of-origin claims could be treated as an unfair or deceptive practice. The order did not itself create a filter requirement.
We also tried to test Walmart’s Sparky assistant, but Walmart required an account sign-in before it would accept a question. We could not repeat Columbia’s Sparky test in our unsigned session.
Some Amazon listings said both Made In USA and Imported.
Columbia found two Amazon examples in which products were described as Made In USA but were also listed as Imported or made with imported material.
A 250th Anniversary USA shirt placed Made In USA in its product name while listing the origin as Imported. We could not independently verify the exact page Columbia cited.
The Royal Tradition 800-thread-count cotton pillowcase set was different. Its product name said Made In USA, while the description said the bedding was made in California from imported fabric. That wording describes U.S. work using foreign material. The concern is whether the shorter, unqualified product name overstated the claim.
“Made In USA” and “Made In USA from imported fabric” are not the same claim.
The AI shopping assistants offered an explanation. Amazon and Walmart did not confirm it.
According to Columbia, Sparky suggested that Walmart faced less enforcement pressure because regulators often pursued manufacturers instead. Alexa said Amazon had little reason to act until the problem created a financial, regulatory or reputational cost.
These were answers generated by the shopping assistants—not official explanations from Amazon or Walmart. They do not prove why either company made its decisions.
Columbia argued that Alexa for Shopping and Sparky had enough data from Amazon and Walmart’s own listings to identify some conflicting Made In USA claims. The researchers offered possible reasons Amazon and Walmart had not acted, but neither company confirmed them.
Preserved in Columbia’s report images and our live capture.
Supported by the tests documented in the report.
The evidence also cannot confirm where every disputed product was actually made.
Columbia found dozens of listings with conflicting origin information. But the study cannot tell us how common these conflicts are across Amazon and Walmart.
The Americana Gecko Take
Finding Made In USA products should not require mental gymnastics, an overnight research project or deliberately reworded prompts just to make a shopping assistant answer.
No federal rule currently requires Walmart to offer a Made In USA filter. But after building hundreds of ways to sort products, leaving out country of origin is more than an inconvenience—it is a failure to serve Americans who want to support American workers.
That failure also puts honest American manufacturers at a disadvantage. Companies that pay American wages and bear the cost of producing goods here must compete against listings whose Made In USA claims are unclear or contradicted elsewhere. When shoppers cannot easily tell the difference, responsible manufacturers lose the distinction they earned.
Amazon and Walmart do not need more AI shopping advice to solve this. They need:
- A visible country-of-origin field
- A Made In USA search filter
- A clear distinction between products made in the United States and products assembled here from imported parts
- An automatic warning when a product name conflicts with its origin information
- Verification that products shown in the Made In USA filter meet the FTC standard
A Made In USA filter would not ban imports or tell people what to buy. It would give shoppers better information and allow them to choose for themselves.
Amazon and Walmart, give us a Made In USA filter—and make it one Americans can trust.
Sources and verification
Verified: August 22, 2026
- Columbia Law School Center for Law and the Economy — report page
- Made in America, Hidden by AI — full report
- Amazon — Golden Fox work-boot listing
- Reuters — report findings and company responses
- News 12 — Amazon’s fuller response
- Wall Street Journal — independent shopping-assistant tests
- FTC — July 2025 warning-letter announcement
- FTC — Amazon warning letter
- FTC — Walmart warning letter
- FTC — Complying with the Made In USA Standard
- Retail Brew / Harris Poll — demand for American-made products
- Gallup / Bentley University — product-origin awareness
- Reuters — FTC warning letters and Walmart’s July 2025 response
- White House — Executive Order 14392
- Golden Fox — Made In USA category
- FTC — textile country-of-origin guidance
Disclosure: Americana Gecko has no affiliate or financial relationship with Amazon, Walmart, Columbia University, Golden Fox, Thorogood or Royal Tradition in connection with this article. No product was purchased or physically inspected. Our checks used online listings, source documents and the Amazon Shopping app; they were not product-performance reviews.
