A historic shift in U.S. economic policy is taking shape regardless of who sits in the White House or controls Congress: an increasingly muscular role for state power to build up industries U.S. leaders deem critical to America’s national security and place in the world.
Whether President Donald Trump’s “America first” manufacturing approach and his mandates to make medical equipment in the U.S., or former Vice President Joe Biden’s “build back better” plan to fund and incentivize a green energy sector, free-market fundamentalism is receding into the rear view mirror — along with any notion that the triumph of western-style liberal democracy and laissez-faire capitalism will grab hold of U.S. competitors around the world.
It’s a bipartisan shift away from a decadeslong allegiance to freer markets and toward a new economic era in which government intervenes more often. And it’s being spurred by one leading force: China’s ascent.
Fears of China’s growing economic might, and America’s dependence on its rival for critical manufacturing and natural resources, are reviving an interest in industrial policy — the use of state power to encourage production on domestic soil, even if it would be cheaper and more efficient to buy products from abroad. Outside a few narrow sectors such as fighter jets and other high-tech defense items, the use of industrial policy had been reviled among Washington policymakers for over a generation. But now it’s coming back, according to interviews for a new episode of POLITICO’s Global Translations podcast being released Wednesday.
Jennifer Harris, who served on the State Department’s policy planning staff under Hillary Clinton, told the podcast that industrial policy was “the kind of term that would get you kicked out of meetings” in the Obama administration. But the relentless rise of China, coupled with disruptions from the Covid-19 pandemic, has changed all that.
“It seems that we are headed into a new Cold War with China. And the question is, what does that require?” asked Harris, a senior fellow at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
“Industrial policy has become now no longer a dirty word. And in fact, I think that a whole lot of serious people are talking about it in the United States as a phenomenon that really crosses party lines,” said Harris, who co-authored a pro-industrial policy manifesto with a top Biden aide, Jake Sullivan, who served as Biden’s national security adviser.
The success of China’s government-led strategic plans — such as “Made in China 2025,” which aimed to make China a leading producer in areas such as industrial machinery, quantum computing and aerospace — have sparked an interest on both sides of the political spectrum in a more strategic role for the U.S. government.
Even Kamala Harris echoed the trend in her speech accepting the vice presidential nomination, promising to “bring back critical supply chains so the future is made in America.”
While Democratic proposals such as the “Green New Deal” emphasize a need to address climate change, Republicans stress the hollowing out of American manufacturing and the strategic challenge of China. Oren Cass, a former policy director for Mitt Romney, has argued that the last two decades of U.S.-China trade provide evidence that policy support for a manufacturing sector does not make it weaker.
