Macroscope | World doesn’t need industrial policy like Biden’s, not that the US cares
- Well-designed policies that support innovation and technology diffusion more broadly can lead to higher economic growth across countries. Policies that limit rivals’ access to technology are hardly best for the world
Education is too important to be left solely to the educators, as former US commissioner of education Francis Keppel famously suggested. This is also true of political leadership, which matters too much to be left only to politicians, whose vision can be severely limited by expediency and nationalism.
We are fast approaching a point where attempts by some leaders to remodel the global economy along political and national lines, at the expense of what is best for the world, threaten to create a crisis situation instead.
Industrial policy – in the least flattering sense of that term – is back in fashion and even though it is usually associated with state-controlled or planned economies, it is being pursued most actively now by the key economies that claim to be market-driven.
At a more sinister level, the idea of cooperation in armaments design and manufacturing is gaining ground among nations including Australia and Britain, as well as some in East Asia. But if this serves the national interests of the partners immediately involved, it does not apply where global economic interests are concerned.
