“Industrial policy” is once again the word of the day. Much like how Margaret Thatcher’s greatest triumph was Tony Blair, Donald Trump’s greatest triumph will be Joe Biden. Thatcher forced her opponents to change their policy, socialism was nixed from Blair’s Labour, and Starmer it seems unlikely to bring it back. So too did Donald Trump make free trade into a dirty word for Democrats and American politicians in general. Whereas Obama, Clinton, and 2 Bushes all championed free trade agreements, Biden increased tariffs on everyone he could (even Canada). And instead of free trade and free competition, he has made directed subsidies of domestic industry his main economic plank.

Tariffs and subsidies make up the economic policy known as “industrial policy” and to be blunt, I hate it. Industrial Policy exactly what Servan-Schreiber proposed in his book “The American Challenge,” and I think looking at that book with a modern lens outlines industrial policy’s biggest flaws. You can’t predict the future, and so a government that tries to force its economy in certain directions often winds up funding dead ends and missing out on the next big thing. Look at what Servan-Schreiber thought governments should fund (supersonic planes, space industry), and look how much of it was bunk. Now look at all the things Servan-Schreiber didn’t think were worth a mention (genetics, the Internet, renewable energy) and look at how they’ve transformed our modern economies. And Servan-Schreiber wasn’t some rando, he was a French politician who could make actual decisions on French industrial policy.

The government just isn’t as good as the market in actually innovating. And a hands-on government is more likely to try to smother innovation to protect jobs rather than allow creative destruction to increase productivity and national happiness.

There’s also the inherent corruption that comes with the government funding industries. Why is Intel given so much money for making microchips when there are plenty of other chip companies out there? The excuse is that Intel is making “more important” chips, but it looks to me like they’re just plowing government subsidies right back into their dividend, handing that money to their billionaire share-holders. So billionaires receive billions of Federal Dollars, and we’re supposed to assume this isn’t corruption?

I don’t like the government giving handouts and bailouts to their favorite, politically connected billionaires. I’d prefer companies be forced to stand up on their own 2 feet like the workers have to. You want to corner the chip industry? Do it by providing a better product, don’t just demand ever more subsidies and protectionism.

This sort of policy is exactly the kind of failure that we learned about in Latin American history as well. Many countries in the 20th century instituted a policy of “imports subsidizing industrialization,” where they raised tariffs on foreign goods to subsidize domestic industry. This led to political capture by the industrialist however, as they realized it was far easier to protect their profits by demanding ever higher tariffs and subsidies rather than investing in producing better products. In the end these countries were left with bloated, uneconomical industrial sectors giving sub-par products to customers. The customers lost as they got less for their money than if they could just buy foreign products without the tariffs. Even today Brazil has extortionate prices on consumer electronics, higher than any other country, and the prices only go down on the rare occasions when the tariffs get cut.

So I don’t want industrial policy, and I want it even less knowing that my political opponents can control it. America currently has a divided government, but a united government that engage in industrial policy is by far the most likely to simply hand the money to the most politically connected industrialists at the expense of everyone else. If you’re a Democrat, would you want Trump to be handing billions of taxpayer’s dollars to his favorite industries?

And I don’t want the government to subsidize dead end industries at the expense of growing ones. I don’t want them to cut off creative destruction and leave us with hand-weavers instead of looms. I don’t want them to protect domestic manufacturers and leave consumers worse off. I don’t like industrial policy, and I think Biden’s greatest failure is that he has become Trump’s greatest triumph.