The American chip industry’s $1.5trn meltdown

In licking county, Ohio, fleets of dump trucks and bulldozers are shifting earth on the future site of chip factories. Intel is building two “fabs” there at a cost of around $20bn. In March President Joe Biden called this expanse of dirt a “field of dreams” in his state-of-the-union speech. It was “the ground on which America’s future will be built”, he intoned.

In the spring it was easy to be dreamy about America’s chip…