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@JoshuaSlocum @Terry :cirnoDoubt:

As recently as the 1980s Red state flyover country was manufacturing sophisticated, consumer electronics using surface mount parts, including RF stuff. It would take a while to regain that, in some cases for passive components I assume we might have to make the tools to make the tools, but it could certainly be done if our ruling trash wasn't intent on destroying the sorts of people who once did this.

Note the period; that's just based on my personal observations, but we're credibly told deliberate deindustrialization really started in earnest the next decade. For seed corn, the (((NSF))) started its campaign to replace American STEM workers with cheaper Third World ones in the mid to latter part of the 1980s.

Even then, the US makes a disproportionate amount of Wafer Fab Equipment for semiconductors to this date, including for example the lasers that power the Netherlands' ASML's all but magic EUV lithography machines. (You know you're in trouble when the process starts with "emit 50K or more tiny molten tin droplets every second...").