A senior economic aide to Joe Biden has called on the US to embrace openly an “industrial strategy” to shore up its manufacturing base, including partnering with allies to bolster crucial supply chains and better compete with China.
Brian Deese, the director of the White House’s National Economic Council, said the pandemic had exposed “unique economic vulnerabilities” in US production, from medical supplies to computer chips, delivering a “wake-up call” to policymakers.
In remarks at the Atlantic Council on Wednesday, Deese pointed to strategic reasons why the US should provide incentives more aggressively to specific industries after decades of scepticism on the grounds that it would create distortions in the economy by picking winners and losers.