I'm not sure that's entirely true. If we define "most advanced nodes" as 5nm-class fabrication, certainly Intel is doing that well now, just not in volume production. Intel 4 based Meteor Lake powered on and runs Windows as of earlier this year.
No capability to build and not ready for volume manufacturing aren't really the same class of problem.
Anyways, I think the CHIPS Act was the right move at the right time. SMIC is quickly catching up thanks to near unlimited funding from the Chinese government. We need to play the same game if we ever want to catch up to TSMC.
Regardless, I’d go further and argue that we should be building up the capability to manufacture our own EUV lithography machines.
As far as I am aware, it’s the exact opposite: over the years, ASML licensed some of their patents to US companies.
[1] https://asiatimes.com/2022/07/how-china-could-leapfrog-us-ch...
If you think about it, ASML wouldn’t be this critical to semiconductor fabrication if it didn’t control the patents for its core tech.
If we don’t gain that capability now, it will take us too long to recover when push actually comes to shove.