Comment by mechagodzilla

There are basically only 3 close-to-cutting edge foundries left - Intel (American), Samsung (South Korean) and TSMC (Taiwanese), and TSMC is in the lead by quite a bit. We're getting extremely close to the end-game of moore's law, so the lifetime of a <7nm fab is likely to be long, and there are likely to only ever be a handful built because they are absurdly expensive (20+ Billion dollars), particularly if you can't keep them fully utilized. There are no 'smaller companies' with cutting edge fabs, and these aren't really American companies who outsourced and are no bringing them back - Intel has always had a large manufacturing presence in the US, and a large part of this is trying to get foreign companies to 'offshore' fabs to the US rather than continuing to concentrate in south korea / taiwan.