From Ross Perot’s warning forward, the US under its enlightened leadership has outsourced those strengths it requires to actually be strong. Posturing and PR are no substitute for middle-class, blue collar productivity and individual human ingenuity. In the last decades our political class has thought they could off-shore and then simply order prosperity like an Amazon doorstep delivery. What a surprise. Supply chains break. And politically-charged sanctions break them further. The solutions are obvious. But the opposition to them great, “progressive” and ideological.
It would be really tough.
A place to start would be steel. The USA would need at least three integrated steel mills to replace current imports. (you don’t just want recycling mills because in the event of war, the supply of scrap steel dries up, as people don’t scrap things if civilian production has been ended).
No private company in the world has built an integrated mill on its own dime since Bethlehem built Burns Harbor in the 1960’s.
The subsidies required to do that would be on the order of the subsidies for EV battery plants.
But what you get is a real solution to a national security vulnerability. VS a fake solution for cars no-one wants to cure a fake problems that doesn’t even exist.
The opposition would be overwhelming to steel mill subsidies. I don’t think it would be possible under the current Regime.