The U.S. Cannot Reindustrialize Without Real Estate

The Trump administration’s new National Security Strategy sends a clear signal: the United States must reindustrialize, rebuild domestic supply chains, and accelerate advanced manufacturing across sectors, including semiconductors, batteries, aerospace, shipbuilding, critical minerals and defense systems. The strategy frames this as essential to competing with China and ensuring long-term national security and economic resilience

That ambition is overdue. But there’s a challenge we are not honestly confronting: We cannot reindustrialize without real estate, and much of the land needed to build the future isn’t ready.

Across the country, projects are being delayed, not because companies lack funding or innovation, but because communities lack industrial sites with the basics in place: zoning, environmental clearance, power capacity, broadband, water access, transportation infrastructure  and predictable permitting.

Meanwhile, our global competitors, especially China, approach manufacturing development the way we once built interstate highways: strategically, nationally and at scale. If the United States continues handling industrial development as a project-by-project negotiation rather than a coordinated strategy, we risk losing the very industries we are trying to bring home.

But readiness isn’t just about land — it’s about power.

Artificial intelligence and data center construction are rapidly consuming energy capacity and the best power-ready sites across the country. These projects matter, but advanced manufacturing — especially in defense, aerospace, materials processing and clean tech — also requires significant megawatt capacity. Robotics automation, microelectronics production, and precision energy storage manufacturing all demand a reliable, scalable electrical supply. 

The difference here, however, is that data centers are backed by companies with trillion-dollar market caps. Meanwhile, our newest advanced manufacturing companies, the ones we need most, didn’t exist five years ago and are still venture-backed and working with early support through federal loans, grants or contracts.

In some states today, projects are stalled because the grid cannot support their load for years, or because delays have left them in the infamous Valley of Death, where too many innovative technologies often find themselves, between critical early funding and getting to market. A country cannot prioritize national security manufacturing if its most strategically essential employers are last in line for power and cannot deliver their products to customers willing to pay for them.

And there is another essential component, one that companies increasingly evaluate before anything else: talent. Advanced manufacturing today is not the assembly-line labor of yesteryear. It requires technicians, machinists, programmers, robotics specialists, welders, chemical process operators and systems engineers. Communities that are investing heavily in community and technical college systems, and even exposing high school students to manufacturing careers, stand out.

The most competitive regions train workers on state-of-the-art machines, build bespoke curricula with industry input, partner with employers on apprenticeships and equipment donations, and treat vocational pathways with the same respect and rigor as four-year degrees.

College will always be right for some. But a healthy economy and a strong industrial base also require pathways that allow students to earn credentials, build skills, and step directly into a well-paying career. The best employers I work with aren’t asking whether training exists — they’re asking whether it’s already working and whether programs can be created specifically for them.

Over the last three years, I’ve traveled the country looking for sites for clients, not to the largest coastal markets, but to Huntsville, Tulsa, Raleigh, Youngstown, Greenville, Wichita and others. What I’ve found is encouraging: communities energized by the idea of rebuilding what made America strong in the first place, namely good jobs, middle-class opportunity, and pride in making things that matter.

And what’s striking is how quickly politics fades outside Washington. The conversations aren’t about partisan wins — they’re about the future. They’re about whether students can afford to stay, whether new industries will come, and whether families will have a reason to plant roots.

To achieve the goals outlined in the National Security Strategy, the U.S. needs a whole-of- society approach that includes involvement from the federal government around investment and permitting as well as venture and institutional investment, the likes of what J.P. Morgan announced earlier this year with its $1.5 trillion security and resiliency initiative to boost critical industries. Equally important is transformative, proactive and tangible engagement from states and regions that include:

• Preparing industrial sites now — not when a company expresses interest.
• Designating and pre-permitting industrial corridors to reduce delays.
• Planning energy generation and transmission aligned with industrial priorities.
• Building evidence of talent readiness: modern equipment, apprenticeships, credentials and employer partnerships.
• Streamlining predictable permitting processes for strategic industries.

This isn’t a call to dilute environmental standards or bypass community voices. It is a call to match our regulatory timelines to the strategic urgency outlined in the National Security Strategy.

We have a rare window of alignment: policy momentum, global supply chain shifts, capital investment and community enthusiasm. But none of it will matter if we fail to prepare.

Reindustrialization is not conceptual — it is physical. It requires land. It requires power. It requires trained people. It requires coordination between local, state and federal leaders.

And it requires planning measured in years, not in response to the next prospect.

America can rebuild its industrial base. The only question now is whether we will prepare fast enough to seize it.

Ken Biberaj is an executive managing director at commercial real estate services firm Savills.