When Congress passed the CHIPS and Science Act, it recognized a simple truth: the United States had become too dependent on overseas manufacturing for one of the world’s most strategic technologies. 

Billions of dollars later, Arizona has become the centerpiece of that national effort.

TSMC’s investment has transformed the Phoenix region into one of the most important semiconductor manufacturing hubs in the world. New fabrication facilities, advanced packaging operations, suppliers, and thousands of highly skilled jobs are changing Arizona’s economy in ways few could have imagined a decade ago. The state’s success is something policymakers should celebrate.

But it also presents an opportunity to ask an important question. Have we reshored enough of the supply chain to achieve the resilience we set out to build?

Much of the public discussion has focused on semiconductor fabrication itself. That is understandable. Fabs represent enormous capital investments and are essential to America’s technological competitiveness. Yet every advanced manufacturing facility depends upon hundreds of specialized suppliers that rarely receive public attention.

One example is cleanroom gloves.

These are not ordinary disposable gloves. Inside semiconductor cleanrooms, gloves become part of the manufacturing process itself. Operators handle photomasks, wafers, advanced packaging components, and highly sensitive equipment where contamination, electrostatic discharge, or residue can damage products worth hundreds of thousands — or even millions — of dollars. In that environment, gloves are a process-control tool rather than simply personal protective equipment.

Despite billions invested in reshoring semiconductor manufacturing, many cleanroom consumables continue to be sourced from overseas manufacturers. That creates a disconnect between the policy objective and the supporting industrial base.

The logic behind the CHIPS Act did not stop at silicon wafers. It was built on reducing strategic

dependence on concentrated foreign supply chains for critical manufacturing inputs. Yet one tier below semiconductor production, many of those same vulnerabilities remain.

Arizona is uniquely positioned to address this challenge.

As TSMC’s campus expands and advanced packaging facilities come online, demand for cleanroom materials, specialty chemicals, filtration systems, automation equipment, precision packaging, and contamination-control products will continue growing. That creates an opportunity not simply to host manufacturing, but to develop an entire ecosystem of domestic suppliers located close to where these products are consumed.

This should matter to policymakers for several reasons.

First, domestic suppliers reduce supply-chain risk. Recent global disruptions demonstrated how quickly shortages of even relatively inexpensive industrial components can slow production.

Second, local manufacturing creates additional high-quality jobs beyond the fabrication plants

themselves. Every supplier attracted to Arizona broadens the state’s advanced manufacturing economy and strengthens regional resilience.

Third, supplier diversification supports national security. If semiconductors are considered strategic assets, then the manufacturing inputs necessary to produce them deserve greater attention as well.

The next phase of Arizona’s semiconductor strategy should therefore extend beyond attracting fabs. It should encourage domestic production of the specialized materials, consumables, and process-support technologies that make those fabs successful.

Arizona has already demonstrated that it can compete for the world’s most advanced semiconductor manufacturing. The next opportunity is to become the nation’s leading advanced manufacturing supply-chain ecosystem.

The measure of success should not simply be how many chips are manufactured in Arizona, but how much of the supporting industrial infrastructure is built here as well.

If we truly believe resilient supply chains matter, then our policy conversation should extend beyond the factory walls. Arizona has already laid the foundation. Now is the time to complete the ecosystem.

Alison Bagwell is chief executive officer of American Armor Gloves, a U.S. manufacturer of cleanroom gloves supporting advanced manufacturing industries.