Comment by mbreese

That’s not the issue. Someone could build the plant domestically (US), sure. It would take time, but getting a plant build isn’t hard. But who would do that? If the plant isn’t financially stable during non-crisis situations, then it won’t get built without subsidies. A plant that can’t offer a competitive price will never be used during “normal” times, so it becomes financially untenable.

We had the same issue with PPE manufacturing during Covid. We lack production capacity locally (US) because it’s normally cheaper to source from outside suppliers. When we try to build that capacity locally, it fails in the marketplace as soon as the crisis is over and the company is left with an expensive unused factory.

The hard part isn’t building a new plant. It is the commitment to ongoing support for maintaining a diverse supply chain that is more robust to geopolitical disruptions. We are not good at factoring risk into pricing, so we only accept the cheapest prices, to the detriment of a robust supply chain.