Power, Land, and the Limits of Reshoring: Infrastructure Sequencing and the New Geography of U.S. Industrial Development

Abstract

The United States is undergoing a renewed push toward domestic industrial production driven by geopolitical fragmentation, supply-chain disruptions, automation, and federal industrial policy. Despite unprecedented levels of announced reshoring investment, realized manufacturing output growth has slowed, revealing a growing gap between intent and execution. This thesis argues that this divergence is not cyclical, but structural. Specifically, it contends that U.S. reshoring is constrained less by capital availability or corporate willingness than by regional capacity to deliver developmentready land and electrical power at scale, in the correct sequence, and within commercially viable timelines. Drawing on reshoring data, trade-flow analysis, industrial real estate research, and utility system planning documents, the thesis demonstrates how land-use constraints, grid congestion, interconnection delays, and fragmented institutional coordination have emerged as binding limits on industrial feasibility. The analysis develops a feasibility framework that links land readiness, logistics infrastructure, construction economics, and energy generation, transmission, and utility sequencing to reshoring outcomes. This framework is applied through a case study of Apex Industrial Park in Southern Nevada, which illustrates how anticipatory infrastructure investment, large-scale industrial zoning, and coordinated utility planning can convert reshoring demand into operational capacity. By integrating national data with a place-based case study, this research provides a structured approach for evaluating where industrial reshoring is likely to succeed and where structural constraints will continue to limit execution, with implications for developers, investors, and policymakers.