Industrial Policy Is A Good Idea, But So Far We Don’t Have One
In a remarkable and comprehensive book, forthcoming from Cambridge, Marc Fasteau and Ian Fletcher provide a theoretical, historical, and up-to-date review of industrial policies, in the United States and elsewhere, as well as a decent summary of the main Biden initiatives: the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the CHIPS Act, as of late 2023. Their goal is to justify, defend, and extend the case for industrial policies, which they do with admirably fair attention to unsuccessful past cases. Mine in this essay is narrower: mainly to describe the specific goals of President Biden’s programs.