I'm Canadian (although on a clear day I'm almost close enough to see Ohio across Lake Erie) and I'm in complete agreement with you.
Everyone in the USA should be utterly ecstatic that Intel is building a large domestic chip plant and not outsourcing even more overseas. This is fantastic news.
Intel has some 15 or so fabs already in the US (most upgraded multiple times), and is constructing two giant new ones in Arizona.
The continental US has a good amount of domestic production capacity. The "problem" is that TSMC and Samsung got a node advantage on Intel, drawing a lot of the performance part manufacturing (including Intel contract work). Will this Ohio plant be competitive on the edge? I haven't seen information indicating that, and the two Arizona fabs Intel is building (operating in 2024) are targeting 7nm.
Samsung (3nm) and TSMC (5nm) are both building fabs in the US as well. A pretty healthy subsidy by the government and various levels of government lubricated the choice. It's good for the sanity and economic stability of the world if everything wasn't concentrated in Taiwan.
Thank you so much for the clarification as this is definitely not my area of expertise. It's heartening to hear that, subsidies aside, the US is managing to maintain significant capacity for domestic production, and it's increasing.
Such investment runs quite counter to the general trends I've witnessed in other manufacturing industries that continue to shrink every year.
To be honest, some shrinking manufacturing doesn't always mean it's bad. It could be, but not always. Sometimes it means increasing the efficiency or disappearing products that aren't in the demand of the society.
Everyone in the USA should be utterly ecstatic that Intel is building a large domestic chip plant and not outsourcing even more overseas. This is fantastic news.