Comment by resters

Empirical studies show that governments typically do not introduce policies that result in benefits overall, and the costs of those polices are typically higher than if everyone had just paid a tax that was given as welfare to the small number of workers in the effected industry.

What position is a homeowner in when they decide to hire someone else to mow their lawn? Economic specialization generally a good thing.

US politicians get enamored by industrial policy when they see what happened to the "asian tiger" economies over the past decades. They forget that those nations were so destroyed by war that the "growth" was less due to the policies than to the people's motivation to live in a free and peaceful society.

China is also now the poster child for industrial policy. China had many years of intentional economic suppression in the name of societal harmony (preventing chaos resulting from some regions being poor and isolated and others being rich). In recent years China has managed to use some of the wealth to undertake a social policy (plus industrial policy) of bringing wealth from the coastal manufacturing regions into the agricultural regions, training workers, etc.

Even in spite of all this, China's GDP is still significantly lower than it would be without all the policies, but the societal order is preserved and there is likely greater social stability.

China faces unique challenges in these areas relative to other countries (largely due to geography) which is why it had suppressed its economy so much for so long.

We are getting a glimpse at what a modern approach to Chinese capitalism will look like and it has already left the US in the dust in terms of productivity. It's ironic that the US mis-attributes the success to the industrial policy rather than to the repeal of it.