Two numbers describe American reshoring right now, and they point in opposite directions. One says the United States has lined up $1.765 trillion in announced manufacturing investment since January 2025. The other says factory construction spending — the actual money turning into foundations and steel — has fallen roughly 21% from its mid-2024 peak. Both are accurate. The gap between them is the most important thing a capital planner can understand about the current cycle.
The reconciliation isn't a paradox. It's a measurement problem: one figure counts intent, the other counts concrete. And once you separate the two, a cleaner story emerges — a semiconductor construction spike that is normalizing, sitting on top of a non-electronics manufacturing base that is still quietly growing.
What the $1.765 trillion actually is
The headline figure comes from IndustrialSage's US Manufacturing Investment Tracker, which counts $1.765 trillion in announced commitments across 160 companies and 37 states since January 2025. The methodology is disciplined in one respect: it captures only projects of $50 million or more, verified against SEC filings, company releases, and government announcements (last updated June 5, 2026).
It is also top-heavy. A handful of mega-pledges drive most of the total: Apple at $600 billion, Micron at $200 billion, IBM at $150 billion, TSMC at $100 billion, Texas Instruments at $60 billion, Johnson & Johnson at $58 billion, AstraZeneca at $54.5 billion, and Roche at $50.7 billion. Strip those eight names out and the headline shrinks dramatically.
The critical caveat is structural: the tracker does not distinguish between a project that has been announced, one that has broken ground, and one that has been completed. It measures stated intent over a multi-year horizon — not capital deployed in any given quarter. A $600 billion pledge spread across years of corporate planning lands in the same column as a fab pouring concrete today. That is the core of the reconciliation gap.
What put-in-place spending measures
The counterweight is the U.S. Census Bureau's manufacturing construction series — construction put-in-place — which records the value of work actually performed. This is the only number that reflects real concrete.
By that measure, manufacturing construction peaked at roughly $239 billion on a monthly basis in June 2024 and has declined about 21% since, to roughly $189 billion, according to IoT Analytics' read of the Census data. FactCheck.org, working from Census and FRED figures, puts the quarterly decline at 6.7% from Q4 2024 through Q3 2025, against a 2024 annual average near $235.6 billion. Different windows, same direction: the concrete side is shrinking while the announcement side swells.
The semiconductor unwind
The decline is not broad-based. It is almost entirely a semiconductor story. The computer, electronic, and electrical (CE&E) construction category — which at its peak represented more than half of all factory construction spending — is down roughly 44% from its July 2024 high, per IoT Analytics.
The mechanism is the 2022 CHIPS Act. It front-loaded a wave of semiconductor construction that pulled spending forward into 2023–2024, producing a spike that is now normalizing as projects stretch out or slip. ABC chief economist Anirban Basu, cited by FactCheck.org, pegged the trailing-12-month drop at nearly 10% and tied the run-up directly to CHIPS Act activity. When the largest, most front-loaded category in a series rolls over, it drags the headline down even if everything else holds.
The split screen
And everything else is not holding flat — it is rising. Excluding electronics, manufacturing construction spending rose about 5.6% between February 2025 and March 2026, according to IoT Analytics — roughly 2.3% in real terms after about 3.3% inflation. Modest, but positive and real.
That is the split screen. The "factory construction is falling" headline is a semiconductor normalization, not an all-manufacturing retreat. Real capacity continues to land in autos and EVs, pharmaceuticals, aerospace, and appliances — the sectors where put-in-place dollars are flowing — even as fab spending unwinds from its CHIPS-fueled spike.
Broken ground vs. slipped
The megaprojects make the announcement-versus-reality gap concrete. Intel's roughly $28 billion New Albany, Ohio fab complex — once the marquee CHIPS-era groundbreaking — has been delayed again, with the first building now targeted for 2030 and the second around 2031. Local reporting underscores the scale of the slip: five to six years past the original 2025 target. Micron's Clay, New York fab saw its groundbreaking move from June 2024 to late 2025.
These projects remain in the announced-investment column at full value. But the concrete they represent has been pushed years to the right — which is precisely why CE&E put-in-place spending fell while the tracker total kept climbing. Announced dollars don't decay when timelines slip; poured concrete does.
Forward look
The near-term direction is down. The AIA's Consensus Construction Forecast (January 2026), as reported by FactCheck.org, projects manufacturing construction declines continuing into 2026–2027. What could reverse it: tariff-driven onshoring pulling new non-electronics capacity forward, CHIPS disbursements finally converting to construction, and delayed fabs restarting their build cycles. None of those is guaranteed, and all operate on multi-year lead times.
The operator takeaway
For anyone underwriting capex, supplier capacity, or regional demand off these headlines, the discipline is straightforward. Treat announced dollars as a pipeline of intent with long lead times and high slippage risk — not as capacity you can plan against. Underwrite to put-in-place trends and sector mix, not press-release totals. And read the construction data by category: the all-manufacturing line is being distorted by a semiconductor unwind, while the non-electronics base it sits on is still expanding. The boom is real in both columns — it just hasn't all reached the concrete yet, and some of it won't for years.
Related reading
-
Intel's Ohio Slip to 2030 Forces Commerce to Convert Its Biggest CHIPS Bet into Equity
-
Wolfspeed's Mohawk Valley SiC Fab Is Ramping Just as the Market It Was Built For Cools