U.S.-owned solar manufacturers were counting on the White House to help them revive a domestic industry by blocking foreign competitors. That emerging consensus means heartache for many companies seeking government help.
While government help can be effective in seeding new industries and bolstering ones that face competitive challenges from abroad, it can’t turn back the clock and revive industries that the U.S. which convinced the Obama administration to co-sign $535 million in loans and went broke about two years later.Įven proponents say industrial policy has its limits. The most recent poster child is Solyndra Corp. Most recently, the Trump administration’s “Operation Warp Speed” bet $10 billion on a number of Covid vaccine candidates and came up with winners.Ĭritics count a long list of failures, including decades-long efforts to create “clean coal,” nuclear reactors that use recycled plutonium, nuclear fusion, synthetic fuels and supersonic commercial jets. Government research and funding helped create commercial jet aircraft, the Internet, communications satellites, digital mapping, and several times kept big auto companies alive during economic downturns. “Part of our effort is to create space again for very serious people to really go to bat for the idea that the government has a rightful role to play” in industrial development, says a senior administration official.īut big industrial policy raises a big question with many billions of dollars at stake: What works and what doesn’t?Īdvocates point to a long record of achievement, starting with Alexander Hamilton whose “Report on Manufactures” argued for tariffs and subsidies to aid fledgling industry. The revival began in the Trump administration, as part of its anti-China offensive, but it has picked up momentum under President Joe Biden, who stocked his economic agencies with figures eager to intervene in the market.
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