Dear Madam or Mr. President,
The United States has in recent years made a major U-turn.
After decades of telling other countries that they should not undertake industrial policies, our country under President Joe Biden enacted two massive bills: the Chips and Science Act, to promote U.S. production of a crucial component of any 21stcentury economy; and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which, in spite of its name, was really about the country beginning its green transition and capturing, for itself, more green jobs. The scale of the acts is enormous—for Chips and Science, some quarter of a trillion dollars, and the IRA, originally estimated at one-third of a trillion dollars, is now thought to be in the order of $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion. The acts are having one desired effect: The called-for investments seem to be occurring, in some cases on a very large scale.
Of course, Washington has always pursued industrial policies, but they were typically hidden, often in the Defense Department. What is really new is that the United States has brought them out into the open.
Critics may carp that the
