With the Biden Administration, America Is Back in the Factory Business
Production at U.S. factories rose last year, but few things were produced at a more furious pace than factories themselves.
Construction spending related to manufacturing reached $108 billion in 2022, Census Bureau data show, the highest annual total on record—more than was spent to build schools, healthcare centers or office buildings.
New factories are rising in urban cores and rural fields, desert flats and surf towns. Much of the growth is coming in the high-tech fields of electric-vehicle batteries and semiconductors, national priorities backed by billions of dollars in government incentives. Other companies that once relied exclusively on lower-cost countries to manufacture eyeglasses and bicycles and bodybuilding supplements have found reasons to come home.
California-based eyewear vendor Zenni Optical Inc. exclusively used its own Chinese manufacturing facilities during much of its 20-year existence. In May, the company opened its first U.S. plant near Columbus, Ohio, to better serve the Midwest and East Coast, where most of its sales originate.
Huge government incentives are stoking the frenzy. The Biden administration, seeing electric vehicles and semiconductors as matters of national security, has devoted billions of dollars to expanding those industries in the U.S. as states are kicking in billions more.