The good news POET has put out here in October, 2023, regarding the SPX factory in Fujian Province, China is definitely exciting to POET investors:

"TORONTO, Oct. 05, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- POET Technologies Inc. (“POET” or the “Company”) (TSX Venture: PTK; NASDAQ: POET), the designer and developer of the POET Optical Interposer™ and Photonic Integrated Circuits (PICs) for the data center, telecommunication and artificial intelligence markets, today announced that its joint venture, Super Photonics Xiamen (SPX), is expanding production capacity to support anticipated customer demand for 2024 and beyond.

“SPX has received purchase orders from customers, and we are excited about the strong demand for the POET engines in 2024 and beyond. Our team has placed orders for additional precision die bonders, testers and additional equipment that will expand production capacity to fulfill the customer orders on hand and expected in the near future,” said Xiaozhong Zheng, CEO of SPX. “Our team is working to improve production efficiencies that will expand capacity well beyond what the equipment itself will provide.”

SPX expects to ramp production of POET’s Optical InterposerTM -based optical engines for 100G CWDM4, POET ONE™ (a 100G single chip TxRx engine), 100G LR4, 200G FR4, 400G FR4 and 800G 2xFR4 solutions. Compared to modules built with conventional chip-on-board and silicon photonics-based components, POET’s optical engines are highly differentiated, hybrid-integrated products. POET’s wafer-scale assembly process and passive alignment techniques result in chip scale optical engines that offer superior performance and lower assembly cost for makers of pluggable transceivers."

That doesn't exclude the advantages or the problems that would arise should POET decide to establish a new plant in Canada or in the U.S.

In focus on the problems that might occur if a U.S. location were to be developed for a POET production facility, the current difficulties of Taiwanese company TSMC is experiencing in just building 2 new huge facilities in Arizona might serve as a warning or, at least a precaution, should POET ever take on the task of trying to build a manufacturing center in the U.S..

Taiwanese microchip company agrees to more oversight of its Arizona plant construction - ABC News (go.com)

TSMC chip fab site in Arizona, touted last year by Joe Biden, struggles with delays and scepticism (msn.com)

“Arizona is the first trial of our overseas mega-site development,” TSMC chair Mark Liu said in September. “It is a learning process of course.” Whether that trial goes well could make or break the US’s quest to resurrect semiconductor production on its shores — an effort underpinned with subsidies worth $39bn for new fabs, which constitute part of the country’s largest public investment in industrial policy since the second world war. The Arizona project could also determine if TSMC can transform itself into a true multinational. But the first two years have been rough, threatening the project’s timeline and the company’s ambitions. The Taiwanese company has struggled with the American approach to construction and labour, says Dylan Patel, chief analyst at SemiAnalysis, a California-based chip industry research and consulting firm. “TSMC didn’t quite get the culture.”

TSMC in the US: can Taiwan’s chip giant overcome a culture clash? | Financial Times (ft.com)

The Phoenix chip factory build has encountered inumerable problems and the same would be in store for a new POET/US or Canadian factory.  There would be cultural clashes and most likely clashes over using union based or foreign based labor to construct the facility, however taking on that learning curve and completing the challenges involved in the attempt would still yield tremendous advantages for POET over the years, especially if the situation regarding U.S. and China geopolitical confrontation continues to heat up abrasively during that same time.  

Establishment of a POET factory in Canada or in the U.S. would not be without problems and the situation for TSMC in Arizona illustrates full well how numerous and how complicated those problems could be, but on the other hand..  diversification of POET factory locations has the advantage of reducing the risk involved in having only a couple of different countries serving as locations for their manufacturing endeavors, particularly when one of those countries is China.

Okiedo