“Built by Americans for Americans”: Flag Sellers Accused of Sourcing From China Anyway

Americana Liberty LLC and Three Nations LLC sold American flags, U.S. military flags, and patriotic flag display accessories with labeling and advertising that left little room for ambiguity: “Made in the USA,” “All-American Made,” “100% Made in the USA,” “100% American Made Tough,” and “Built by Americans for Americans.” According to a federal complaint, several of those products were wholly imported from China, and others were made up of significant or essential foreign components sourced from China.DOCUMENTED

The case, brought by the Federal Trade Commission against the two companies and three individual principals, followed an earlier warning letter the agency's staff sent in July 2025 raising concerns about the same claims.DOCUMENTED When the warning did not produce a change in practice, the FTC moved from a letter to a formal complaint and settlement.

What the complaint alleges

Beyond the FTC Act's general prohibition on deceptive claims and the Made in USA Labeling Rule, the complaint against Americana Liberty and Three Nations also invokes the Textile Act and its accompanying rules — a separate body of law requiring specific, mandatory disclosures on the labeling and advertising of textile fiber products, including flags.DOCUMENTED The complaint alleges the defendants failed to include those mandatory disclosures, depriving consumers of accurate information about where the products they were buying actually originated, while simultaneously making origin claims the agency alleges the sellers knew to be false.DOCUMENTED

The FTC's complaint states that the defendants “repeatedly and prominently” represented their products as American-made through their corporate websites, digital marketing, and other marketing materials — language the agency characterizes as more than an isolated labeling oversight.REVIEWED The pairing of a false country-of-origin claim with a missing textile disclosure is, per the complaint, what elevated the matter from a labeling technicality to a law enforcement action involving named individual principals alongside the corporate entities.

The particular sensitivity of flag products

American flags and patriotic display items occupy a distinct place in Made in USA enforcement, both because the imagery itself invokes national origin and because flag sales tend to spike around patriotic holidays and civic anniversaries — a period during which the FTC's Made in USA sweep, of which this case was part, was specifically timed.REVIEWED The complaint's allegation that flags marketed as “Built by Americans for Americans” were in some instances wholly manufactured in China represents, in the agency's telling, precisely the kind of claim the Made in USA standard exists to prevent: a consumer paying a premium for a domestic-origin product that does not exist as advertised.

Terms of the settlement

Under the proposed stipulated order, the defendants must pay $167,743 toward consumer redress.DOCUMENTED The order separately prohibits future misrepresentations regarding U.S.-origin claims, bars misleading or unsubstantiated country-of-origin claims more broadly, requires the disclosures mandated under the Textile Act and Textile Rules going forward, and requires the defendants to notify consumers of the settlement.DOCUMENTED

The complaint alleges the defendants sold flags marketed as “Built by Americans for Americans” that were, in some instances, wholly manufactured in China.

Part of a broader enforcement pattern

The Americana Liberty and Three Nations case was one of three enforcement actions the FTC announced on the same day in April 2026, all stemming from the agency's Made in USA sweep following a March 2026 presidential executive order directing prioritized enforcement of domestic-origin claims.DOCUMENTED FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection Director Christopher Mufarrige said the actions were meant to ensure that “American businesses, who have made the necessary investments in domestic manufacturing, are not disadvantaged” by competitors making unsubstantiated claims.DOCUMENTED

For sellers of patriotic and textile-adjacent products, the case is a reminder that Made in USA scrutiny does not stop at the FTC Act's general deception standard. Textile and flag products carry an additional, more specific labeling regime, and a company that markets domestic origin while sourcing internationally faces exposure under both bodies of law at once — a combination that, in this case, extended liability from the corporate entities to their named individual principals.

Naming individuals, not just companies

The decision to name Maximiliano Ojeda, Virginia Hilfiger, and Julian Groves individually, alongside Americana Liberty and Three Nations as corporate entities, reflects a recurring feature of FTC enforcement against smaller, closely held companies: when a business's marketing decisions trace directly to a small number of identifiable principals, the agency has increasingly named those individuals in the complaint itself rather than limiting the action to the corporate shell.REVIEWED That approach matters for consumer redress, since a corporate entity alone can sometimes fold or restructure in ways that make a judgment difficult to collect, while an order binding named individuals follows those people regardless of what happens to the company they used to sell through.

The $167,743 redress figure is modest relative to some of the FTC's larger Made in USA settlements, a reflection of the scale of Americana Liberty and Three Nations' operations relative to bigger consumer brands the agency has pursued on similar grounds. But the order's requirements — mandatory textile disclosures, a prohibition on future unsubstantiated origin claims, and required consumer notice of the settlement — apply regardless of company size, underscoring that Made in USA compliance obligations do not scale down for smaller sellers. The case also illustrates how a single warning letter, if unheeded, can escalate into a court-filed complaint carrying financial and reputational consequences well beyond what an informal notice alone would have imposed. For a company selling patriotic goods in particular, having a federal complaint on the public record over false domestic-origin claims carries a reputational cost that may ultimately outweigh the redress figure itself.

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