This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, June 8th,

2023. I'm Caleb Brown.

Fans of industrial policy of government putting its thumb on the scales in the name of

social benefit are learning in fits and starts

that all the other government preferences built into statutes over decades would make their

plans dramatically less impactful.

Cato Scott Linscomb tries to give our friends on the pro-intervention side of the debate.

Some good news.

Why is it, Scott, that you think I need to call my local industrial policy fan and I don't know maybe send an edible arrangement or something like that to save their hurt feelings.

Yeah, so in the last few months, the dreams of a lot of industrial policy champions that have been expressed over the last couple of years and

the enthusiasm they've had about the implementation of a really wide range of new US industrial policy measures in the bipartisan

infrastructure bill in the Inflation Reduction Act and in the

Chips and Science Act for semiconductors.

So all of those grand plans have,

unfortunately or fortunately, depending on your perspective,

for them, unfortunately,

run smack dab into political reality.

And they've done that in two ways.

First is the implementation of these measures has now become subject to all sorts of highly politicized conditions.

So you have to, if you want to build a semiconductor fab in the United States and get federal money, you have to offer free child care to your workers.

You have to share your profits with the government. You have to, of course, agree not to trade with China and so forth and so on.

So those, of course, political restrictions are going to raise the cost of these

...