There are no atheists in foxholes, and there are no subsidy hawks in a supply chain crisis. A crunch in semiconductor production, a food shortage, a general sense that the global trading system is unreliable: suddenly, the fiscal valve is wrenched open and the public cash starts to pour.
Having spent several years attempting to craft new rules to restrain trade-distorting industrial subsidies (aimed very obviously at China), advanced countries have rather undermined their own arguments by lining up lavish handouts themselves. The US and EU each have their own Chips Act to encourage semiconductor production, with a combined public spending boost target of about $100bn, after big spending programmes by Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. After years of trying to use the World Trade Organization and other forums to inoculate economies from the subsidy disease, Washington, Brussels and Tokyo have caught the bug themselves. The Global Trade Alert monitoring service says that even before the pandemic, 62 per cent of global goods trade was in products and on trade routes where subsidised American, Chinese, and European firms compete: the number of subsidy programmes has only increased since.
The EU and US insist that their semiconductor subsidies will meet WTO rules. But even if a subsidy is legal, doesn’t mean it’s wise. The surge of spending might have been a good time to revise and tighten WTO rules: it has not been taken.