A strong, vibrant manufacturing sector is critical to the future prosperity of the United States and its workers. The authors provide enormous background, case studies, and analysis about how to implement strong trade and industrial policies to restore America’s leadership in innovation and manufacturing – and the good jobs that come with it. Even the most controversial policy recommendations are worthy of review and consideration, no matter your position on trade policies. This should be required reading for any policymaker working to increase America’s productive capacity and strengthen our supply chains.
Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR)
Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Trade, House Ways and Means Committee
The U.S. is losing the international competition for good jobs and high-value industries because most of official Washington still believes trade should be free, the dollar should float, and innovation is the responsibility of the private sector alone.
This new book makes the bold case that these laissez-faire ideas have failed and that a robust industrial policy is the only way for America to remain prosperous and secure.
Trump and Biden have enacted some of its elements, but America's industrial policy now needs to be made systematic and comprehensive. This means tariffs to protect key industries, a competitive exchange rate, and federal support for production, not just invention, of new technologies.
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Timely, meticulously researched, and bipartisan, this impressive analysis replaces misunderstandings about industrial policy with lucid explanations of its underlying economic theory, the tools that implement it, and its successes (and failures) in America and abroad.
​It examines key industries of the past and future – textiles, steel, shipbuilding, automobiles, television, semiconductors, space, aviation, robotics, biotech, and nanotech. It examines the history of industrial policy in major countries: Japan, Korea, China, Germany, France, Britain, India, Argentina -- and the U.S. And it examines American regions, such as Greater Boston and Upstate New York.
The book concludes with a realistic, actionable policy roadmap.
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A work of rigor and ambition, Industrial Policy for the United States is essential reading for anyone who cares about America's economic future.​[more...]
Marc Fasteau
is a vice-chair of the Coalition for a Prosperous America. Before founding an insurance company acquired by Progressive, he was a partner at Dillon Read & Co., a New York investment bank, and previously a congressional economic staffer. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, where he was on the Law Review. He lives in New York City.
Ian Fletcher
is on CPA’s Advisory Board. He is the author of Free Trade Doesn’t Work and coauthor of The Conservative Case against Free Trade. He has been senior economist at the Coalition, a research fellow at the US Business and Industry Council, an economist in private practice, and an IT consultant. He was educated at Columbia University and the University of Chicago. He lives in San Francisco.
