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.
Noah Smith: Manufacturing is a war now
noahpinion.blog
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Notes -
The Mongols desired world domination and a good chunk of their genepool is in China today.
And power is seductive. One could easily say 'America doesn't want world domination they just want to stay in isolation on their continent' back in the 19th century. But they had the power, they had global interests by virtue of their size, they got sucked in and began to enjoy wielding their strength.
The Chinese are the same. When East Asia was all they knew, they worked hard to dominate it. China today has global interests in market access, resources, ideological legitimacy. They buy Iranian and Russian oil, they're building ports in Argentina, they refine nickel in Indonesia, Chinese companies fight drug wars against Mexican gangs for distribution rights in US cities: https://x.com/SantsPliego/status/1748496050543837404
They are so big that they end up doing almost everything, almost everywhere. Every day there will be some dispute over fishing rights, some struggle with local interests, some crisis that needs a response. There is a voice shrieking 'use power' in the ear of their leaders every single day, from events and from their subordinates (who were raised in the atmosphere of intense nationalism they used to replace Maoism). It would require leaders of superhuman passivity and benevolence to resist the urge to start wielding their economic and military power forever.
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