Ramstad: What does ‘Made in the USA’ mean? Minnesota businesses like Nordic Ware are questioned.

I live a mile from the Nordic Ware factory in St. Louis Park. I know it’s in the U.S.A.

But earlier this month, a man in New York sued the company for putting “Made in the USA” labels on its baking sheets, loaf pans and anything it makes from aluminum.

The Federal Trade Commission says three conditions must be met for a “Made in the USA” label. One is “all or virtually all ingredients or components of the product are made and sourced in the United States.”

The trouble for Nordic Ware — and many other makers of metal goods — is that bauxite, the ore that aluminum is extracted from, is no longer mined in the U.S.

These days Americans don’t just quarrel over who gets to be American. We’re also quite the sticklers about what can be called American-made.

And for companies like Nordic Ware, this is happening as tariffs on raw materials including aluminum are rising under the Trump administration. Class action attorneys over the past year also sued Reynolds Consumer Products, which makes Reynolds Wrap, and Walmart, which makes its own brand of aluminum pans and housewares, for claiming their aluminum-based products are “Made in the USA.”

“It is front and center. I suspect more companies are going to try to capitalize on that and talk about what’s ‘Made in the USA,’” said Gonzalo Mon, an attorney in Washington who specializes in advertising law. “We will see class action attorneys paying more attention.”

The global economy and investing markets have been turned upside down by President Donald Trump’s belief that placing tariffs on imported goods will lead to increased manufacturing in the U.S. It’s an extreme remedy to the anxiety Americans have felt for decades about the decline of manufacturing.

As I’ve written before, I don’t support Trump’s tariffs and fear they will push the U.S. into recession. I’m also not worried about America’s manufacturers.

While China passed the U.S. in value of goods produced, the U.S. is still a solid No. 2. And the U.S. exports far more goods by value today, even adjusted for inflation, than it did in the 1970s.

That’s the decade when manufacturing as a portion of America’s employment base peaked. Competition from other countries’ manufacturers grew in the 1980s and 1990s, and the slogan “Buy American” started showing up on bumper stickers. People then began debating what could be called “American-made.”

In 1997, the Federal Trade Commission issued a policy that a product could be labeled “Made in the USA” when final assembly happened in the U.S., significant processing happened in the U.S. and “virtually all” ingredients or components were made and sourced in the U.S.

“Part of the issue is there isn’t a specific percentage assigned to the ‘virtually all,’” Mon said. “To complicate things further, it’s not just the percentage of parts. It’s how important those parts are to the whole.”

The FTC 10 years ago took issue with Nordic Ware for placing an American flag on the cover of its catalog when it sold some goods imported from elsewhere.

In response, the company “took several steps to ensure that marketing materials do not state or imply that all company products are made in the United States,” according to a letter closing the matter.

On April 11, a man named Michael Kaufmann from New York filed suit in Minneapolis federal court against Nordic Ware, saying he would not have paid the approximately $44 he did for the company’s quarter-sheet and half-sheet baking pans had he known that its “Made in the USA” label was false and misleading.

The suit was brought by a San Francisco law firm that specializes in class actions. It declined my interview request.

Nordic Ware hasn’t yet filed a response in court. In a statement, the company noted that raw aluminum comes from Canada and is processed in the U.S. at rolling mills into the form that it uses.

“Nordic Ware believes this suit is frivolous and without merit because virtually all the manufacturing processes and virtually all of the fabrication and transformation take place with the U.S.A. using U.S. labor,” it said in the statement.

In an interview, David Dalquist, the company’s chief executive, pointed out another complicating element. As an exporter, Nordic Ware follows “country of origin” rules set forth by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency. Its key criteria is the last place where “material transformation” takes place.

“They need to know that for charging tariffs,” Dalquist said. “That’s pretty well-understood law and goes back to the 1930s vs. this FTC thing that is fairly recent. For export purposes, it’s got to be clearly marked on the carton and preferably on the product itself. So these two rules seem to butt heads.”

With its 80th anniversary ahead next year, Nordic Ware employs more than 300 people in Minnesota who make hundreds of baking products. It’s known as the inventor of the bundt pan, and fairly often comes up with some wild new pan for bakers to make even more intricate bundt cakes.

Since the imposition of the aluminum tariffs, Dalquist said, “I’ve lost a fair amount of sleep.”

Because Canada retaliated with tariffs on American products, Nordic Ware is facing the loss of sales to Canadians as well as higher costs for aluminum that starts there and is processed here.

On the plus side, some U.S. retailers are reaching out seeking more products from Nordic Ware to take the place of goods they imported from elsewhere.

“That’s one positive that’s come out of it,” Dalquist said. “I guess that was the intent of the tariffs.”