The critical point has been reached.

The part you don't want to be around for is following the realisation that there is no path back.

This would be a lot more compelling if we didn't already know where most of our money is actually dead-ending at (it's American billionaires).

What a ridiculous argument. So then every single country, every single city, every street should build their own chips, their own iPhones, right? Because wouldn't want to be "a simple consumer" only!

Surely we could just move a subsidy around. Do we really need ALL of those corn fields? It’s not even a particularly nutritious crop.

We are the government. It's us doing the spending. You can vote to change it. And if we ever outlaw paid lobbying then voting will be even more effective.

COVID was a 2 year period in a century. It's way cheaper to assume this risk than pay a premium all the time.

The main issue here is political.

Two issues there.

First, high-end chips have essentially a single global market. Compared to the value of the product, transport cost is negligible. If a TSMC Taiwan factory has an oopsie, all its customers are going to be buying from your local US plant - so you are still ending up having to deal with the effects of a significantly higher demand. AMD unable to ship? Expect Intel to go out of stock rather quickly as well.

Second, the chip manufacturing supply chain. Having a local chip factory is nice and all, but where is that factory getting its supplies and equipment from? Most of it does not come from the US, so during another COVID your local chip factory might still be forced to shut down. This also applies downstream: what use is a fancy high-end CPU if you can't find anyone locally to produce all the trivial parts you need to support it? Who is going to manufacture those trivial-yet-essential $0.05 connectors and $0.001 capacitors or resistors? That has all been outsourced to Asia decades ago.

A single US plant isn't going to do anything for your supply chain robustness. You're going to have to rethink the entire chain and each step is going to be 20% more expensive, so better prepare for a doubling or tripling of the final product price.

Local factories are nice for the defense industry, where the confidentiality needs due to national security might warrant the premium. But regular consumer chips? You'll be paying a huge premium just so a politician can get a couple of favorable headlines, often without there actually being a significant impact to the local economy.

Why are people showing up to tell other people they'll be sorry if they don't pay more for the same product now, but are also absolutely opposed to subsidies by the government?

I already own a perfectly adequate computer for my needs. In every possible way this won't affect me, and infact so long as the cheaper product is available for purchase it still won't affect me. If I'm a business I'll be 20% better off then other local businesses by continuing to not buy local anyway. If I'm consumer...well I'll just have more stuff I want.

And so on in this way you might want to go read up on The Tragedy of the Commons in economic theory and then reflect on what one of the primary roles of government actually is.