Quotation of the Day…

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… is from page 30 of Michael Strain’s new paper “Protectionism is Failing and Wrongheaded: An Evaluation of the Post-2017 Shift toward Trade Wars and Industrial Policy”:

All the old questions about industrial policy are worth repeating in light of its revival: Why should we expect the government to do a good job of picking winners and losers or to allocate scarce resources better than the market? If the government intervenes in markets, how will it avoid mission creep, cronyism, and corruption?

DBx: Excellent questions. Industrial policyists seldom bother even to acknowledge such questions, and they never answer them.