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- Feb 14, 2026
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Think your power tools are made in the USA? We expose the truth about global supply chains, the failed Craftsman factory, and
who actually builds here
Hey guys. I see this exact question pop up in the forum almost every single week. Someone asks which power tools are still made in America. Someone else instantly replies "DeWalt." Another guy jumps in and says "Milwaukee." Then a massive fight breaks out over who sold out first and which brand relies more on imported plastic.
I decided to actually settle the debate.
I spent the weekend tracking down the physical supply chains for 2026. I pulled FTC guidelines, checked factory lease records, and looked at shipping manifests. The reality of tool manufacturing is messy. Building a modern battery-powered drill is basically like building a laptop. It requires lithium cells, rare earth magnets for brushless motors, and injection-molded plastics. Almost zero companies source all of those raw materials domestically.
Here is exactly who builds what inside the United States right now.
The FTC rules for "made in USA"
Before we look at the brands, you have to understand the law.
The Federal Trade Commission has a strict legal definition for the "Made in USA" label. To print those exact words on a cardboard box without any qualifiers, all or virtually all of the product must be sourced and processed inside the 50 states. The steel must come from an American mill. The plastic must come from an American chemical plant. The final assembly must happen on American soil.
For modern power tools, achieving this is physically impossible. You cannot buy American-mined lithium for consumer batteries at scale yet.
So tool companies rely on a secondary label. "Made in the USA with global materials."
That label means the physical parts arrived from overseas, but American workers bolted the final tool together in a domestic factory. Keep that distinction in mind when you walk down the tool aisle.
The Craftsman disaster in Texas
In 2019, Stanley Black & Decker made a massive bet. They decided to bring Craftsman back to its American roots.
They spent 90 million dollars building a 425,000 square foot factory in Fort Worth, Texas. They expected to hire 500 people. They planned to build mechanics tools and eventually expand to power tools using highly automated robotic assembly lines.
It completely collapsed.
The automated systems could not handle the physical demands of forging, machining, and plating tools at scale. The robots broke down repeatedly. Quality control dropped. By March 2023, the plant was dead. They laid off the remaining 175 workers. They quietly shipped the operations back to their overseas facilities.
The dream of a fully American Craftsman revival died on that factory floor in Texas. If you see a new Craftsman V20 drill at Lowe's today, look at the sticker. It almost certainly says made in China or Mexico.
DeWalt's assembly empire
DeWalt is owned by the exact same parent company as Craftsman. But they took a much more realistic path.
DeWalt operates 7 different manufacturing facilities across the United States. You can find their assembly plants in places like Charlotte, North Carolina and Greenfield, Indiana. They lean hard into the "Made in the USA with global materials" strategy.
The internal components ship across the ocean in massive containers. The brushless motors, the trigger switches, the lithium-ion cells, and the steel chucks all arrive as raw parts.
American workers then take over. They bolt the plastic housings together. They run the wiring harnesses. They test the final torque specifications. They package the tools for retail.
I respect this approach. It keeps thousands of blue-collar assembly jobs right here. If you walk into Home Depot and want a drill put together by an American worker, DeWalt gives you the most options. Just look for the bright yellow badge on the box. Their 20V Max XR impact drivers usually wear this badge proudly.
Stihl's Virginia Beach fortress
If we include gas and battery-powered outdoor equipment, Stihl absolutely dominates domestic manufacturing.
Stihl is originally a German company. But shipping heavy chainsaws across the Atlantic costs a fortune. In 1974, they decided to build a plant in Virginia Beach.
Today, that facility spans 150 acres. It contains 1.5 million square feet of manufacturing space. They employ over 2,000 people in Virginia alone. They manufacture over 275 different model variants right there.
They do not just assemble parts. They process 16 million kilograms of plastic granulate a year to mold their own engine housings. They machine their own steel guide bars. They do their own heavy metal casting.
Stihl exports these American-built tools to 80 different countries. When you fire up a gas-powered Stihl Farm Boss, you hold a machine built by American hands. They even recently added a massive battery production line for their cordless electric trimmers and blowers. You can actually go take a guided public tour of this place if you wear closed-toe shoes. You can watch the raw plastic pellets get melted down and injected into chainsaw molds right in front of you.
Milwaukee Tool and the Wisconsin return
Milwaukee Tool has the most American-sounding name on the market. But a massive conglomerate in Hong Kong called TTI owns them.
For the last decade, almost every Milwaukee M12 and M18 power tool came out of a factory in China or Vietnam. But things are slowly shifting. Milwaukee recently started pouring money back into Wisconsin. They opened a massive new facility in West Bend. They expanded their operations in Mukwonago and Sun Prairie.
Here is the catch. Those new American factories focus entirely on hand tools.
They forge heavy-duty pliers, screwdrivers, and layout tools. They want to crush Klein Tools in the electrician market. I bought a pair of their new USA-made angled diagonal cutting pliers last month. The machining is incredibly tight. They laser-harden the cutting edges.
But again, that is a hand tool. If you buy a Milwaukee M18 Fuel impact wrench today, it is still imported. Some highly specialized accessories and heavy equipment get assembled stateside. But their core cordless lineup remains strictly foreign-made. If you want a magnetic tape measure, they build those here. If you want a rotary hammer, it ships from Asia.
Makita's Georgia outpost
Makita is a Japanese engineering powerhouse. They build some of the most durable brushless motors on the planet.
They also maintain a quiet but massive American manufacturing presence. Makita operates a giant facility in Buford, Georgia. They assemble a specific subset of their heavy equipment there.
If you buy a massive Makita sliding compound miter saw or a large air compressor, American workers likely assembled it. Some of their heavy-duty demolition hammers go through that Georgia plant as well.
Like DeWalt, they rely on global components for the internal guts. But the physical assembly and quality testing happen on American soil. The Buford plant also handles a massive amount of distribution and warranty repairs. If you burn out a Makita grinder, the replacement parts are likely sitting on a shelf in that Georgia warehouse.
The death of the corded tool
We have to look back at history to understand why true American power tools disappeared. Thirty years ago, making a power tool locally was much easier.
A corded drill is a relatively simple mechanical device. You just need a plastic housing, an armature, a stator, a commutator, some carbon brushes, a trigger, and a thick power cord.
Tool companies could stamp the steel for the motor housing in Ohio. They could wind the copper wire for the electromagnet in Michigan. They could mold the heavy plastic body in Illinois. Milwaukee built their legendary corded Hole Hawg right in Wisconsin. Black & Decker built tools in Maryland.
Then the lithium-ion battery arrived.
The battery supply chain problem
Cordless tools completely changed the global supply chain.
A modern 20V drill replaces the simple copper-wound AC motor with a highly complex DC brushless motor. These new tools require rare earth neodymium magnets. They need sophisticated electronic speed controllers. They need battery management system boards to prevent the lithium cells from catching fire.
The entire supply chain shifted from traditional steel manufacturing to advanced electronics manufacturing. Most of those electronic components are fabricated in Taiwan or China. The lithium-ion cells themselves usually come from massive factories in Asia. Samsung, Sony, and Sanyo build the 18650 or 21700 cells that power your tools.
To build a 100 percent American cordless tool today, a company would have to mine lithium in Nevada, refine it domestically, manufacture the cells in the US, and fabricate the circuit boards here. We simply lack the infrastructure to do that cheaply. If a brand tried to build a pure American drill right now, it would cost 800 dollars.
We traded domestic manufacturing for convenience. We got tools that can drive 500 screws on a single charge. We lost the factories that built them.
The hand tool exception
I have to mention hand tools before wrapping up. The rules for hand tools are completely different.
If you want a tool forged from pure American steel, hand tools give you plenty of options. The battery revolution forced power tools overseas. But steel dictates where hand tools are built. America still produces excellent high-carbon steel.
Channellock still forges their iconic blue-handled pliers in Meadville, Pennsylvania. Estwing hammers are forged in one solid piece of steel in Rockford, Illinois. You can drop an Estwing off a roof 50 times and it will never break. Klein Tools continues to forge their core lineup of Lineman's pliers in the USA.
If you want to support domestic manufacturing from the raw material all the way to the finished product, buy American hand tools.
My final buying advice
So where should you actually spend your money?
If you want to support American assembly jobs in the cordless power tool market, buy DeWalt. Look for that specific "Made in USA with global materials" logo on the box. You are directly paying the salaries of assembly line workers in places like North Carolina and Indiana.
If you need outdoor power equipment, buy Stihl. The Virginia Beach plant builds world-class tools.
If you need a heavy miter saw, check the label on the Makita box to see if it came from Georgia.
If you buy Milwaukee, do it because they engineer incredibly durable tools. Just know your money is mostly flowing to Hong Kong.
Stop chasing the ghost of the old Sears Craftsman. That era is completely gone.
Check your labels, know the FTC rules, and spend your money where it counts.
What tools are you guys running right now? Drop your experiences below. Let me know if you have noticed a quality difference between your older US-made stuff and the new imported models.
who actually builds here
Hey guys. I see this exact question pop up in the forum almost every single week. Someone asks which power tools are still made in America. Someone else instantly replies "DeWalt." Another guy jumps in and says "Milwaukee." Then a massive fight breaks out over who sold out first and which brand relies more on imported plastic.
I decided to actually settle the debate.
I spent the weekend tracking down the physical supply chains for 2026. I pulled FTC guidelines, checked factory lease records, and looked at shipping manifests. The reality of tool manufacturing is messy. Building a modern battery-powered drill is basically like building a laptop. It requires lithium cells, rare earth magnets for brushless motors, and injection-molded plastics. Almost zero companies source all of those raw materials domestically.
Here is exactly who builds what inside the United States right now.
The FTC rules for "made in USA"Before we look at the brands, you have to understand the law.
The Federal Trade Commission has a strict legal definition for the "Made in USA" label. To print those exact words on a cardboard box without any qualifiers, all or virtually all of the product must be sourced and processed inside the 50 states. The steel must come from an American mill. The plastic must come from an American chemical plant. The final assembly must happen on American soil.
For modern power tools, achieving this is physically impossible. You cannot buy American-mined lithium for consumer batteries at scale yet.
So tool companies rely on a secondary label. "Made in the USA with global materials."
That label means the physical parts arrived from overseas, but American workers bolted the final tool together in a domestic factory. Keep that distinction in mind when you walk down the tool aisle.
The Craftsman disaster in TexasIn 2019, Stanley Black & Decker made a massive bet. They decided to bring Craftsman back to its American roots.
They spent 90 million dollars building a 425,000 square foot factory in Fort Worth, Texas. They expected to hire 500 people. They planned to build mechanics tools and eventually expand to power tools using highly automated robotic assembly lines.
It completely collapsed.
The automated systems could not handle the physical demands of forging, machining, and plating tools at scale. The robots broke down repeatedly. Quality control dropped. By March 2023, the plant was dead. They laid off the remaining 175 workers. They quietly shipped the operations back to their overseas facilities.
The dream of a fully American Craftsman revival died on that factory floor in Texas. If you see a new Craftsman V20 drill at Lowe's today, look at the sticker. It almost certainly says made in China or Mexico.
DeWalt's assembly empireDeWalt is owned by the exact same parent company as Craftsman. But they took a much more realistic path.
DeWalt operates 7 different manufacturing facilities across the United States. You can find their assembly plants in places like Charlotte, North Carolina and Greenfield, Indiana. They lean hard into the "Made in the USA with global materials" strategy.
The internal components ship across the ocean in massive containers. The brushless motors, the trigger switches, the lithium-ion cells, and the steel chucks all arrive as raw parts.
American workers then take over. They bolt the plastic housings together. They run the wiring harnesses. They test the final torque specifications. They package the tools for retail.
I respect this approach. It keeps thousands of blue-collar assembly jobs right here. If you walk into Home Depot and want a drill put together by an American worker, DeWalt gives you the most options. Just look for the bright yellow badge on the box. Their 20V Max XR impact drivers usually wear this badge proudly.
Stihl's Virginia Beach fortressIf we include gas and battery-powered outdoor equipment, Stihl absolutely dominates domestic manufacturing.
Stihl is originally a German company. But shipping heavy chainsaws across the Atlantic costs a fortune. In 1974, they decided to build a plant in Virginia Beach.
Today, that facility spans 150 acres. It contains 1.5 million square feet of manufacturing space. They employ over 2,000 people in Virginia alone. They manufacture over 275 different model variants right there.
They do not just assemble parts. They process 16 million kilograms of plastic granulate a year to mold their own engine housings. They machine their own steel guide bars. They do their own heavy metal casting.
Stihl exports these American-built tools to 80 different countries. When you fire up a gas-powered Stihl Farm Boss, you hold a machine built by American hands. They even recently added a massive battery production line for their cordless electric trimmers and blowers. You can actually go take a guided public tour of this place if you wear closed-toe shoes. You can watch the raw plastic pellets get melted down and injected into chainsaw molds right in front of you.
Milwaukee Tool and the Wisconsin returnMilwaukee Tool has the most American-sounding name on the market. But a massive conglomerate in Hong Kong called TTI owns them.
For the last decade, almost every Milwaukee M12 and M18 power tool came out of a factory in China or Vietnam. But things are slowly shifting. Milwaukee recently started pouring money back into Wisconsin. They opened a massive new facility in West Bend. They expanded their operations in Mukwonago and Sun Prairie.
Here is the catch. Those new American factories focus entirely on hand tools.
They forge heavy-duty pliers, screwdrivers, and layout tools. They want to crush Klein Tools in the electrician market. I bought a pair of their new USA-made angled diagonal cutting pliers last month. The machining is incredibly tight. They laser-harden the cutting edges.
But again, that is a hand tool. If you buy a Milwaukee M18 Fuel impact wrench today, it is still imported. Some highly specialized accessories and heavy equipment get assembled stateside. But their core cordless lineup remains strictly foreign-made. If you want a magnetic tape measure, they build those here. If you want a rotary hammer, it ships from Asia.
Makita's Georgia outpostMakita is a Japanese engineering powerhouse. They build some of the most durable brushless motors on the planet.
They also maintain a quiet but massive American manufacturing presence. Makita operates a giant facility in Buford, Georgia. They assemble a specific subset of their heavy equipment there.
If you buy a massive Makita sliding compound miter saw or a large air compressor, American workers likely assembled it. Some of their heavy-duty demolition hammers go through that Georgia plant as well.
Like DeWalt, they rely on global components for the internal guts. But the physical assembly and quality testing happen on American soil. The Buford plant also handles a massive amount of distribution and warranty repairs. If you burn out a Makita grinder, the replacement parts are likely sitting on a shelf in that Georgia warehouse.
The death of the corded toolWe have to look back at history to understand why true American power tools disappeared. Thirty years ago, making a power tool locally was much easier.
A corded drill is a relatively simple mechanical device. You just need a plastic housing, an armature, a stator, a commutator, some carbon brushes, a trigger, and a thick power cord.
Tool companies could stamp the steel for the motor housing in Ohio. They could wind the copper wire for the electromagnet in Michigan. They could mold the heavy plastic body in Illinois. Milwaukee built their legendary corded Hole Hawg right in Wisconsin. Black & Decker built tools in Maryland.
Then the lithium-ion battery arrived.
The battery supply chain problemCordless tools completely changed the global supply chain.
A modern 20V drill replaces the simple copper-wound AC motor with a highly complex DC brushless motor. These new tools require rare earth neodymium magnets. They need sophisticated electronic speed controllers. They need battery management system boards to prevent the lithium cells from catching fire.
The entire supply chain shifted from traditional steel manufacturing to advanced electronics manufacturing. Most of those electronic components are fabricated in Taiwan or China. The lithium-ion cells themselves usually come from massive factories in Asia. Samsung, Sony, and Sanyo build the 18650 or 21700 cells that power your tools.
To build a 100 percent American cordless tool today, a company would have to mine lithium in Nevada, refine it domestically, manufacture the cells in the US, and fabricate the circuit boards here. We simply lack the infrastructure to do that cheaply. If a brand tried to build a pure American drill right now, it would cost 800 dollars.
We traded domestic manufacturing for convenience. We got tools that can drive 500 screws on a single charge. We lost the factories that built them.
The hand tool exceptionI have to mention hand tools before wrapping up. The rules for hand tools are completely different.
If you want a tool forged from pure American steel, hand tools give you plenty of options. The battery revolution forced power tools overseas. But steel dictates where hand tools are built. America still produces excellent high-carbon steel.
Channellock still forges their iconic blue-handled pliers in Meadville, Pennsylvania. Estwing hammers are forged in one solid piece of steel in Rockford, Illinois. You can drop an Estwing off a roof 50 times and it will never break. Klein Tools continues to forge their core lineup of Lineman's pliers in the USA.
If you want to support domestic manufacturing from the raw material all the way to the finished product, buy American hand tools.
My final buying adviceSo where should you actually spend your money?
If you want to support American assembly jobs in the cordless power tool market, buy DeWalt. Look for that specific "Made in USA with global materials" logo on the box. You are directly paying the salaries of assembly line workers in places like North Carolina and Indiana.
If you need outdoor power equipment, buy Stihl. The Virginia Beach plant builds world-class tools.
If you need a heavy miter saw, check the label on the Makita box to see if it came from Georgia.
If you buy Milwaukee, do it because they engineer incredibly durable tools. Just know your money is mostly flowing to Hong Kong.
Stop chasing the ghost of the old Sears Craftsman. That era is completely gone.
Check your labels, know the FTC rules, and spend your money where it counts.
What tools are you guys running right now? Drop your experiences below. Let me know if you have noticed a quality difference between your older US-made stuff and the new imported models.