Go read Ganesh Sitaraman on America’s Industrial Policy Traditions

A must read in @TheProspect.

Hamilton always gets the love on industrial policy, but @GaneshSitaraman recovers Franklinian, Madisonian, and Jacksonian traditions as well.

It’s vital that we try to ground industrial policy in American traditions and institutions, as @oren_cass @AmerCompass are doing among conservatives (manhattan-institute.org/resolved-that-…) As well as the lessons learned by progressives from the New Deal’s experimentation with industrial policy. @FeliciaWongRI draws on some of those lessons here. (bostonreview.net/politics/felic…)

In the US context, industrial policy has to be sensitive to the manifold veto points, i.e. if I were gambling my own money, I’d bet it would go in the direction of a “fourth branch of government” a la Fed or RFC, with bipartisan governing structure. (medium.com/@toddntucker/b…) Alternatively (or in addition to), it could be stood up on the back end of the regulatory process through overhauling how we do cost-benefit analysis and international agreements, as @rdnayak and I write here. (greatdemocracyinitiative.org/document/oira-…)

There are a lot of options to the “how.” But we’ve passed the point on “if” we will do industrial policy. The climate crisis demands it, as @HendricksB @rgunns @SamTRicketts write here. (democracyjournal.org/magazine/56/th…) And rising inequality and COVID mean we’ll need industry-wide approaches to rebuilding labor markets and worker power, as @sharblock @WorkerPowerLaw have been hammering home. Industrial policy can help. (today.law.harvard.edu/labor-day-2020…)

(Adapted from this thread.)