Reshoring and New Factories: Latest Plant Announcements in North America

October 28, 2026 | ATN Trade & Finance

The factory-building wave that began in 2022 with the CHIPS and Science Act has entered a new phase in 2026: groundbreakings that were announced years ago are now turning into physical steel and concrete, while a second tier of announcements — pharmaceuticals, electric vehicles, and steel — is filling in the sectors the semiconductor wave left untouched. The cumulative tally of reshoring and foreign direct investment job announcements has crossed two million since 2010, according to the Reshoring Initiative, with semiconductors and electrical equipment together accounting for roughly two-thirds of the 2024 wave. What has changed in 2026 is that the largest projects are no longer prospective — they are under construction, and in some cases already producing.

Semiconductors: Four Megaprojects, All Moving Simultaneously

The most capital-intensive reshoring in American industrial history is happening across four semiconductor programs simultaneously, each at a scale that would have seemed implausible five years ago.

TSMC's Arizona commitment reached $265 billion as of July 16, confirmed jointly by TSMC and the US Commerce Department — a number that encompasses 12 semiconductor and packaging facilities plus an R&D center across a 2,000-plus-acre campus near Phoenix. The first fab (Fab 21 Phase 1, producing at 4nm) has been in high-volume production since Q4 2024, shipping wafers to Apple and NVIDIA. Construction on Fab 21 Phase 2 (3nm) was completed in early 2026, equipment installation began in Q3, and volume production is now targeted for the second half of 2027 — roughly a year ahead of the original schedule. Construction on a fourth facility and an advanced packaging plant started in early 2026, with the packaging facility targeted for 2028. TSMC raised its 2026 capital expenditure forecast to $60–64 billion from the prior $52–56 billion range and said in October it is evaluating additional investment in Texas, though no site has been announced.

Micron broke ground on January 16 in Clay, New York, on a facility that, when complete, will be the largest semiconductor factory in the United States. The $100 billion project — part of a $200 billion total commitment that also covers new fabs in Idaho and an expansion in Virginia — will house four fabricators producing advanced memory chips for AI applications. The state of New York contributed $5.5 billion in support; the federal CHIPS Act contribution is up to $6.4 billion. Production in Clay is targeted for 2030. Micron's Idaho facility is on a faster track, with production expected in 2027.

Intel is in the tool move-in phase at Fab 62 in Chandler, Arizona — the most capital-intensive stage of fab construction, when the precision equipment that actually makes chips is installed. Fab 62 sits adjacent to Fab 52, which has been producing chips at Intel's 18A process node in high-volume manufacturing since October 2025. Fab 62 is expected to reach production before the end of 2028, running high-NA EUV lithography. A separate decision is pending: Intel has said it will not fund the capital investment to bring its next-generation 14A process to high-volume production without at least one significant external foundry customer. The process design kit for 14A was released to potential customers in October, and the decision window runs into early 2027. A December 31 deadline is also relevant: the advanced manufacturing investment tax credit under Section 48D currently provides a 35% credit for semiconductor facilities, but only for projects that begin physical construction by year-end.

Samsung's Taylor, Texas complex remains the most complicated of the four. The project has grown from an original $17 billion commitment to $37 billion, with $4.75 billion in CHIPS Act support. Fab 1 — building for 2nm production — already has a partial operating permit and is slated to begin mass production in 2027, anchored by a reported $16.5 billion chip supply contract with Tesla for AI5 and AI6 inference processors. Fab 2, a second 2.7-million-square-foot building targeting 2030 production, is in the building permit process and will break ground once those permits are issued. Samsung's Taylor campus will collectively support roughly 1,800 permanent jobs within a decade — a small headcount relative to the capital investment, which reflects the highly automated nature of leading-edge chip manufacturing.

Pharmaceuticals: Eli Lilly's $27 Billion Domestic Build-Out

Outside semiconductors, the largest single-company domestic manufacturing commitment of 2026 is Eli Lilly's $27 billion four-plant expansion, which the company calls the largest pharmaceutical manufacturing investment in US history. The program reflects two simultaneous pressures: surging global demand for GLP-1 obesity and diabetes drugs that Lilly cannot produce fast enough, and a post-COVID strategic imperative to reduce reliance on offshore API suppliers.

Lilly broke ground on a $6.5 billion facility in Houston in September 2026. The plant will produce Foundayo (orforglipron), Lilly's synthetic oral GLP-1 drug, along with other small-molecule medicines and advanced oligonucleotide therapies. More than 600 jobs are expected. A $6 billion active pharmaceutical ingredient plant in Huntsville, Alabama, where construction started in 2026, will take until 2032 to reach completion given pharmaceutical validation timelines — it is expected to become Lilly's fifth domestic API site and will produce oral GLP-1 medicines. A $5 billion cancer drug manufacturing plant in Richmond, Virginia, is on a similar five-year construction-to-production horizon. The fourth site has not been announced. Lilly's program illustrates a broader pharmaceutical reshoring trend: the combination of trade-policy tariff risk on Chinese and Indian API imports and the commercial pressure from competitor supply constraints has made domestic manufacturing investment an operational necessity, not just a political gesture.

Electric Vehicles: Factories Opening, Not Just Announced

Tesla inaugurated its new Semi factory in Sparks, Nevada, on September 24, 2026 — a 1.7-million-square-foot Class 8 electric truck assembly plant designed for 50,000 vehicles per year, built adjacent to Gigafactory Nevada at a cost of approximately $3.6 billion. High-volume production had already begun in late April; the September event was a public opening of a facility already running. The Tesla Semi carries a price of roughly $290,000 per unit, and the factory represents the first purpose-built Class 8 electric truck production facility in North America.

Rivian's Georgia plant in Stanton Springs began vertical construction in spring 2026 on a 9-million-square-foot campus backed by a $1.5 billion Department of Energy loan approved in April. The facility targets 400,000 vehicles per year by 2028 and is a condition-of-incentive requirement for the 7,500 jobs tied to $1.5 billion in state support. Stellantis committed $13 billion across Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio, with Indiana four-cylinder engine production starting this year, Jeep assembly lines in Illinois reopening in 2027, and a Warren, Michigan plant being retooled for a range-extended EV and large SUV by 2028.

Steel and Aerospace

Hyundai Steel is breaking ground on a $5 billion electric arc furnace steel mill in Louisiana in 2026 — part of a broader co-location strategy with Hyundai Motor's Georgia EV plant. A separate $5.8 billion ultra-low-carbon steel project using electric arc furnace technology is also under development in Louisiana, with the producer not yet publicly named. JetZero, a blended-wing-body aircraft startup backed by the US Air Force, is breaking ground on a $4.7 billion manufacturing facility in North Carolina to produce demonstrator and eventual production aircraft.

What This Means: The scale of North American manufacturing investment is real — but the gap between groundbreaking and production is measured in years, not months, and the gap between announcements and filled jobs is measured in decades. Semiconductor fabs announced in 2022 will reach full production employment in 2030 or later. Pharmaceutical plants that break ground in 2026 face five-to-seven-year validation cycles before commercial output. Only 2% of companies with reshoring plans have fully completed them, according to survey data, and skilled trades — particularly controls engineers, process technicians, and advanced manufacturing operators — remain the binding constraint. The Deloitte/Manufacturing Institute projection of up to 1.9 million unfilled manufacturing roles by 2033 is directly relevant to the supply chain: the facilities being built today will compete for the same workforce that suppliers, logistics operators, and contract manufacturers rely on. For businesses sourcing from or exporting to North America, the practical implication is a multi-year transition period in which announced domestic capacity exists on paper but contracted offshore supply remains operationally necessary.

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Reshoring and New Factories: Latest Plant Announcements in North America

Reshoring and New Factories: Latest Plant Announcements in North America

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