The First Wave of Reshored Chip Plants Is Opening. The Results Are Mixed

A wave of new semiconductor and battery manufacturing plants funded by recent industrial policy legislation is beginning to open across several states, testing whether the investment can genuinely rebuild domestic manufacturing capacity that shifted overseas decades ago.

Federal industrial policy legislation aimed at rebuilding domestic semiconductor and battery manufacturing capacity has funded a wave of new plant construction across several states, with the first facilities now beginning production after years of construction and equipment installation following the initial funding announcements.

Early results have been genuinely mixed: some projects have hit their production targets roughly on schedule, while others have faced delays tied to skilled labor shortages, supply chain bottlenecks for specialized equipment, and the sheer complexity of building advanced manufacturing capability that took decades to develop in the countries the U.S. is now trying to compete with.

Workforce training is proving as hard as the construction itself

Several projects have specifically cited difficulty finding enough workers with the specialized technical skills advanced semiconductor fabrication requires, a workforce gap that reflects decades of that manufacturing expertise concentrating overseas rather than in the domestic labor market these new plants now need to draw from.

“We can build the building faster than we can train the workforce that decades of offshoring left us without.”

With additional facilities still under construction and workforce training programs expanding alongside them, most industry observers describe the reshoring effort as a genuine multi-year undertaking rather than a problem the initial funding alone was ever going to solve on a short timeline.