For many years, this humble blog has described how the US, contrary to our own popular mythology, does industrial policy by giving certain sectors tax breaks, cheap funding, government backstops, and/or direct government spending. Those industries include heath care, real estate, higher education, banking, and arms making. In other words, like Moliere’s Bourgeois Gentilhomme, who was surprised and pleased to learn that he was speaking prose, the US has long engaged in industrial policy, but by default, to serve special and powerful rather than national interests.
But it appears that the success of China in orchestrating its economy has become so undeniable that folks inside the Beltway have gone from trying to counter the impact of Chinese intervention to copying from their playbook. We’ll turn soon to the Wall Street Journal story describing this change in heart.