The US is retreating behind chokepoints and tariffs. It remains determined to invent the future but is struggling to ensure its control
Globalisation is out; reshoring is the new realism. Intel’s half-built Ohio campus and Nvidia’s US supercomputer plan demonstrate the very different routes taken by Joe Biden and Donald Trump in the search for homegrown tech dominance. Mr Biden relied on institutions: grants, land and investment incentives. That approach has stalled after last year’s election, rendering Intel’s plant idle. Mr Trump prefers court politics: flattery, pressure and tariff threats. Nvidia’s move seems driven less by design than executive ultimatum. Industrial strategy lives on – but, and this is a concern, increasingly through presidential menace, not policy.
There’s another important message in the Nvidia announcement. In an era where ideas spread freely, power lies not in invention but in chokepoints, such as artificial intelligence supercomputer fabrication, that determine who can scale those ideas into global platforms. Remember that as the US braces for a backlash over the breakdown of the old trade order.
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