As I said at the CSIS Global Security Forum yesterday, you cannot stumble your way into effective industrial policy. We've lived with too many fiefdoms across the government for too long, without sufficient orchestration from above.
Whether it's a renamed Department of Competitiveness or, as Rob Atkinson of ITIF calls for, a National Competitiveness Council (which would allow that necessary cross-government coordination, rather than relying on a revamped single Department or Agency to do it), we need something different.
We also need to resurrect, or rebuild, the equivalent of the Office of Technology Assessment, but focused on techno-economic net assessment, not only one or the other. And place it within the Competitiveness Council.
We can assume that China's reps to the Geneva tariff talks were under marching orders to consider tariffs as part of China's overarching industrial policy; the US reps were there to talk tariffs, only tariffs, and tariffs as a zero-sum game.
Excellent conversation.
As I said at the CSIS Global Security Forum yesterday, you cannot stumble your way into effective industrial policy. We've lived with too many fiefdoms across the government for too long, without sufficient orchestration from above.
Whether it's a renamed Department of Competitiveness or, as Rob Atkinson of ITIF calls for, a National Competitiveness Council (which would allow that necessary cross-government coordination, rather than relying on a revamped single Department or Agency to do it), we need something different.
We also need to resurrect, or rebuild, the equivalent of the Office of Technology Assessment, but focused on techno-economic net assessment, not only one or the other. And place it within the Competitiveness Council.
We can assume that China's reps to the Geneva tariff talks were under marching orders to consider tariffs as part of China's overarching industrial policy; the US reps were there to talk tariffs, only tariffs, and tariffs as a zero-sum game.