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-_-_-_-_-  13d ago (noahpinion.blog)   1801 thread views

Noah Smith: Manufacturing is a war now

noahpinion.blog

Industrial policy has been a frequent subject on Smith's blog, for those who don't follow it. (He's for it, and thinks that Biden's industrial policy was mostly good - it's worth following the links in this post.) This post focuses on defense-related geopolitical industrial policy goals and pros and cons of anticipated changes under the incoming Trump administration and Chinese responses. Particularly, he highlights two major things China can do: Restrict exports of raw materials (recently announced) and use their own industrial policy to hamper the West's peacetime industrial policy (de facto policy of the last 30 years). These are not extraordinary insights, but it's a good primer on the current state of affairs and policies to pay attention to in the near-future.

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I can think of half a dozen countries off the top of my head who could start wars to gain territory if they knew they had the implicit permission of NATO and the western powers.

None of those countries are as powerful as China, most don’t have nuclear weapons and - if they do - so does the other guy. That’s the difference.

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