The U.S. should re-industrialize domestically by narrowing the gap between its 20-30% share of global consumption and its much lower share of production, while using a hub-based approach to distribute supply chain capacity across allied regions for non-core production.

Helberg explains that the U.S. consumes far more than it produces, and narrowing that gap means re-industrializing with autonomy (since unemployment is at 4%). Meanwhile, a hub-based approach leverages regional strengths — Philippines for manufacturing, Africa for rare earths — to build distributed, reliable supply chains for the other 70% of global consumption currently concentrated in China. ✦ AI generated

Jacob Helberg · No Priors · 2026-05-14 · original ↗

America consumes somewhere in the neighborhood between 20 and 30% of global consumption on any given quarter. We're basically 1/4 to 1/3 of the world's total consumption. And our production levels are not 20 or 30%. We produce a lot less than that. If we narrow the gap between what we consume and what we produce, we will re-industrialize America because that will be a massive re-industrialization plan that will inevitably include a lot of semi-autonomy or full autonomy. And because if we industrialize in an economy where unemployment's already at 4%, it will have to be very, very autonomous. Part of the idea for the forward deployed industrial base and these economic security zones is actually to have a hub-based approach where we can leverage the industrial attributes. The effort to bring back semiconductor fab production here is already well underway. It wouldn't necessarily make sense to try to replicate that elsewhere because it's highly technical, the global supply of talent is very finite, and it's extremely capital intensive. But the supply chain is vast and there's a lot of things that still need to be built.

verbatim transcript · starts at 14:59