Business & Financial Times
Date of Publication:
July 2024
After being disparaged and disdained for decades, industrial policy is back on the global economic agenda. Perhaps the strongest evidence of industrial policy’s rehabilitation is a recent international conference on rethinking structural transformation, cosponsored by the International Monetary Fund and attended by some of the world’s most influential economists.
Industrial policy is back in vogue for many reasons, including fears of deglobalization, the emergence of a multipolar world, supply-chain disruptions, the return of economic nationalism, and trade tensions (most notably between the United States and China, but also among Western countries). Governments in the United Kingdom, the United States, France, Vietnam, Brazil, and South Africa have all issued industrial-policy blueprints.
But despite renewed global interest in industrial policy, intellectual and policy elites remain confused about its precise meaning, its specific instruments, and how it differs from other economic policies. This is true of economists who advocate it, as well as those who disparage it.
Citations
Célestin Monga. 2024. The false distinction between industrial and economic policy. Business & Financial Times, July 12, 2024.