Comments close today on the first full rewrite of federal buying rules in 40 years

By Staff Reporter

WASHINGTON — The public comment period on the first batch of formal rules in the Trump administration’s rewrite of the Federal Acquisition Regulation closes today. The FAR is the rulebook that governs how agencies spend close to $1 trillion a year, and the four proposed rules due today cover some of its most heavily used parts: buying commercial products, small purchases, negotiated contracts, contract types and contractor responsibility.

For a rewrite its authors describe as the first end-to-end overhaul of the regulation in its 40-year history, the public record so far is thin. The Federal Register’s count of comments received through Regulations.gov, as of 5:55 a.m. today, stood at 47 on the largest of the four rules and 104 across all four.

Where this came from

President Trump ordered the overhaul in Executive Order 14275 on April 15, 2025. The order said the FAR “has swelled to more than 2,000 pages of regulations” and directed that it “contain only provisions required by statute or essential to sound procurement.” It also asked the FAR Council to consider making nonstatutory rules expire after four years unless renewed.

The Office of Management and Budget then launched what it calls the “Revolutionary FAR Overhaul.” In the first phase, during fiscal 2025, the FAR Council issued model class deviations replacing each part of the FAR on an interim basis. The second phase is formal rulemaking: twelve proposed rules that together would rewrite the whole regulation, according to the Sept. 18 Federal Register notice. Four were published that day with comments due Oct. 19, the FAR Council’s comment page and Federal Register records show: FAR Cases 2026-003, 2026-006, 2026-010 and 2026-011.

What would change

The biggest of the four, FAR Case 2026-003, rewrites parts 8, 12, 13, 15, 38, 44 and 51. The council says it would “fundamentally re-engineer the structure, scope, and mechanics” of Part 12, which covers commercial products and services. It would move into Part 12 the statutory authority to use simplified procedures for commercial buys of up to $9 million, or $15 million in certain emergencies, making the part what the notice calls a “one-stop shop” for commercial acquisitions.

Part 15, which governs negotiated contracts, would shift from “discussions” to “negotiation.” The proposal would eliminate the step of exchanges with bidders before a competitive range is set, broaden the use of clarifications, revise the definition of “deficiency” and formally recognize an additional way to pick a winner: the highest technically rated proposal with a fair and reasonable price, with no tradeoff between price and technical merit. The notice argues that bidders now write proposals to meet minimum requirements and avoid elimination, and that contracting officers avoid simple clarifications “to avoid inadvertently crossing the boundary into a discussion and creating a protest risk.”

Throughout, “shall” becomes “must” or “will,” and requirements not rooted in statute were either kept, moved into nonbinding guidance such as a new “FAR Companion,” or dropped. The notice says the council kept nonstatutory rules that serve “as guardrails to protecting taxpayer interests.”

Who is weighing in

The rule’s small-business analysis says it “may have a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities,” noting that 401,196 entities registered in the federal contractor database were small for at least one industry code as of January 2026. It also states that the changes “do not impose any new requirements or burdens on small business concerns.”

The comments posted so far include filings from individual practitioners, anonymous commenters and small firms; Pyramid Systems, Inc. and 1791 Technologies LLC are among the companies that filed on the main docket. One individual commenter asked the council to keep a bidder’s clear opportunity to respond to adverse past-performance information before it leads to exclusion, arguing the proposal would make that opportunity discretionary. Another said the basic safeguarding clause is missing from the proposed table of clauses that flow down to commercial subcontracts.

Some industry voices have urged companies to file. Ross Nodurft, executive director of the Alliance for Digital Innovation, wrote that under the rewrite each clause would say on its face whether it applies to commercial buys, and an agency would need a deviation to add others. “The council has shown it can accept changes based on specific recommendations, so give it specifics,” he wrote, as quoted in the Defense Tech and Acquisition newsletter.

What to watch

More deadlines follow. A General Services Administration proposal to move Federal Supply Schedule ordering procedures out of the FAR and into GSA’s own acquisition regulation takes comments until Oct. 22, and paperwork-burden notices tied to three of today’s cases run to Nov. 23, Federal Register records show. The FAR Council’s page lists four more overhaul packages, covering parts 1 through 7 and others, without comment dates. Comments received generally will be posted without change at Regulations.gov, the notice says, so the final tally and the names of the big trade groups and contractors that file late today should be visible this week. The council must then weigh them before any final rule.

Image: The main entrance to the General Services Administration Headquarters Building, 1800 F Street NW, Washington. GSA is one of the four members of the FAR Council. Photo by G. Edward Johnson via Wikimedia Commons, licensed CC BY 4.0.