2026 General Seminar - Shangjin Wei (Columbia)

Title: The United States as an Active Industrial Policy Nation

by Jiandong Ju, Yuankun Li and Shang-Jin Wei

Abstract:  We document and characterize a new history of U.S. federal-level industrial policies by scanning all 12,167 Congressional Acts and 6,030 Presidential Orders from 1973 through 2022. We find several interesting patterns. First, contrary to a common perception, the United States has always been an active industrial policy nation throughout the period, regardless of which party is in power, with 5.4 laws and 3.4 Presidential Orders per year on average containing new industrial policies. Second, we identify roughly 300% more instances of industrial policies than those in the Global Trade Alert (GTA) database during 2008-2022, despite using essentially the same definition. Third, industrial policies in practice are as likely to be justified by national security as by economic competitiveness. Fourth, many U.S. industrial policies incorporate design features that help mitigate potential drawbacks, such as explicit expiration dates and pilot programs for emerging technologies. Finally, based on stock market reactions and firm performance, the identified policies are recognized as economically significant in shifting resource allocations.