FAR Overhaul final rules stall as OMB weighs changes

The 12 final rules that will cement the provisions of the Revolutionary FAR Overhaul are still under review at the Office of Management and Budget, months after their expected release.

Four rules are apparently close to being published in the Federal Register, but the final sign-off still needs to come from OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.

The rules will finalize changes to the Federal Acquisition Regulation that kicked off in May 2025 with a series of mass deviations. The release of those deviations wrapped up in late September, finishing at a breakneck pace.

The expectation was that draft final rules would begin to appear in early 2026, but nothing has emerged so far.

Washington Technology has been told the General Services Administration and OMB will make changes from the deviation based on comments submitted and feedback after months of having the deviations in place.

A first quarter release has given way to a hoped-for release in the second quarter.

Everything sits at OMB and OIRA and there is high potential for significant changes.

One item to watch out for is how OMB will want to incorporate President Trump’s March 13 executive order Ensuring Truthful Advertising of Products Claiming to Be Made In America.

Most of the order applies to consumer products. But Section 2/Part D, the order requires agencies with governmentwide acquisition contracts to periodically review and verify claims of compliance with the Buy American Act. This also includes “Country of Origin USA” or any similar made in America claims.

If any contractor found to misrepresent any product, the agency will remove the products from their contracts and refer the contractor or vendor to the Justice Department.

The referral could kick off a False Claims Act investigation.

The FAR Overhaul already includes Buy American Act provisions, which in Part 25 include a 65% threshold for U.S. content in products. That rises to 75% U.S. content after 2029.

Currently, a product can be compliant with Buy American Act provisions if it has 35% non-U.S. content.

But with the March executive order, OMB could want to change these provisions to be more in-line with the executive order.

The challenge stretches beyond the FAR because many agencies are currently working on an overhaul of their own agency-specific procurement rules. The Defense Department, Agriculture Department and General Services Administration are among those agencies.

Major changes by OMB would trigger rewrites across the agencies.

The Revolutionary FAR Overhaul is in some ways a victim of its own success. Its high profile helped GSA move with lightning speed through the deviations.

But as one source has told us, the overhaul has also been talked about at cabinet meetings. That level of scrutiny also can slow things to a crawl.