After US President Joe Biden took office, some believed he would take a different path from that of his predecessor and that the Trump years were over. However, one of President Biden’s first moves was to strengthen American protectionism by heightening the United States’s “Buy America” and “Buy American” requirements. With this, the American government procurement market started to close off even more, and Canadian suppliers, in turn, grew worried. Given the United States’s international procurement commitments and the specificity of the Buy American Act and the Buy America Policy, this article explores the pathways to favourable treatment of Canadian suppliers in keeping with applicable international trade rules.

Allotment and subcontracting are the two procedures enabling small businesses to participate in procurement. We compare these two procedures in the context of a procurement contract awarded by a first-price sealed-bid auction. We assume that the public buyer wishes to fulfil two different goals: to minimize expected costs of the contract for the public buyer and to maximize small businesses' profit. We show that, under specific cost-technology conditions we determine, the allotment procedure not only enables extensive participation by small businesses but also can achieve the goal of minimizing expected total costs for the public buyer.

Cet article étudie les marchés publics à tranches. Ces procédures sont caractérisées par la présence d’une incertitude sur la réalisation complète d’une opération. Celle-ci est alors découpée en plusieurs travaux (tranches) qui doivent être réalisés successivement. La première tranche est effectuée juste après l’attribution du marché, tandis que l’affermissement des suivantes est soumis à la réalisation de certaines conditions prévues par le contrat. Les règles optimales d’approvisionnement sont déterminées pour deux tranches. On montre que la firme la plus efficace ex-ante gagne le marché. Mais l’incertitude fait qu’elle ne l’est plus nécessairement ex-post. Nous évaluons par la suite le coût de l’incertitude lié au risque d’une allocation inefficace ex-post.