Two economic visions compete for the future of the American economy
By Michael Lind Manufacturing is back in the news. The combination of Obama administration initiatives to help American manufacturing with criticism of China?s unfair trade and industrial policies by candidates for the Republican presidential nomination has produced a bipartisan backlash by prominent academic economists including Christine Romer, a Democrat and a former Obama economic adviser, in the New York Times., and Michael Boskin, a Republican and adviser to the first President Bush.
Romer and Boskin agree that government should do nothing to save or promote the manufacturing sector in the United States. Their critiques of industrial policy, in turn, have produced responses by prominent advocates of federal aid for technological innovation and manufacturing, including Clyde Prestowitz, a former Reagan administration official and founder of the Economic Strategy Institute.
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