ECONOMY – The Return of the Strategic State: The United States’ Industrial Policy Between Power, National Security and Technological Competition (2001-2025)

By François SOUTY 

François Souty, President and Founder of the Jefferson Circle, Paris (2001), PhD Hist. Econ., former International Affairs Officer at the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Competition (2021-2024), has been a member of the OECD Committee on Competition Policy from 1996 to 2024. He teaches EU institutions and Geopolitics at the Excelia Business School group (La Rochelle-Paris Cachan) and EU Competition Law and Policy at the Faculty of Law of the University of Nantes. 

He is in charge of the Economics section at Diplomate Média.

« Not only wealth, but the independence and security of a country seem to be materially linked to the prosperity of manufactures. »

Alexander Hamilton, Report on Manufactures, December 5, 1791.^[1]

Executive Summary

The passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS and Science Act,  and major federal programs to support critical industry and technologies has placed U.S. industrial policy at the center of contemporary debates about economic power and international competition. These developments are often presented as a sign of a spectacular return of the state to the economy or as a major break with several decades of liberal globalization. Such an interpretation appears, however, and, to say the least, highly reductive.

This article argues that contemporary U.S. industrial policy is neither a recent innovation nor a simple cyclical reaction to the rise of China. It is deeply part of a longer intellectual, institutional and strategic trajectory, the origins of which can be traced back to the debates on national competitiveness that developed at the end of the Cold War and found a first political expression under the Clinton administration. The attacks of September 11, 2001, the financial crisis of 2008, the Covid-19 pandemic and the assertion of China as a systemic rival have gradually transformed these initial reflections into a real paradigm of national economic security.

The article shows that the period 2001-2025 corresponds to the gradual construction of a new American strategic state whose ambition goes far beyond the traditional objectives of growth or the correction of market failures. Industrial policy is now designed as an instrument for preserving national power, securing critical supply chains, mastering strategic technologies and reducing external dependencies.

This transformation is based on an original institutional architecture involving the White House, Congress, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Energy, the Department of Defense and a wide range of federal research and innovation agencies. At the same time, it mobilizes budgetary, fiscal, regulatory and commercial instruments whose coherence stems from the same strategic logic: to maintain the technological and industrial leadership of the United States in an international environment marked by the return of competition between great powers.

The study also highlights the structuring role played by several sectors considered decisive for national security and the country’s future prosperity: semiconductors, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, cybersecurity, biotechnology, space technologies, defence industry, batteries, electric vehicles, hydrogen and energy transition technologies. Through the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act, the Biden administration has given this orientation an unprecedented budgetary and doctrinal scope, without breaking with certain trends already perceptible under the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations.

Beyond partisan alternations, the article highlights the emergence of a growing consensus around the idea that economic, technological and industrial power is now an essential dimension of national security. This evolution is reflected in an unprecedented rapprochement between industrial policy, trade policy and geopolitical strategy. Export controls, investment restrictions, reshoring policies, national preference mechanisms and support mechanisms for critical technologies are now part of the same logic of power.

The analysis ultimately leads to questions about the deep nature of the model that is emerging in the United States. Far from the simple return of classic interventionism, it seems to herald the formation of a new regime of economic governance in which the federal state acts as the architect of national competitiveness, the guarantor of economic resilience and the central player in global technological competition. From this perspective, American industrial policy appears less as a short-term parenthesis than as one of the most significant manifestations of the contemporary recomposition of the relationship between economy, technology, national security and power.

Introduction

Since the very origins of the American Federation, which is celebrating its two hundred and fiftieth anniversary this year, the economic history and industrial policy of the United States has been part of a fruitful tension between two intellectual traditions often presented as contradictory but which in reality appear to be profoundly complementary and continuous. The first, embodied by Alexander Hamilton and quoted in the epilogue, sees in the development of manufactures, productive power and technical innovation the very foundations of national wealth, independence and security. As early as 1791, in his famous Report on Manufactures, Hamilton formulated an intuition that would run with rare consistency throughout the economic history of the United States until 2026: a nation cannot sustainably preserve its political freedom without having the industrial capabilities that guarantee its strategic autonomy.^[2]

The second tradition is the one described by Alexis de Tocqueville, half a century later, when he observes an American society driven by an extraordinary entrepreneurial energy, where citizens spontaneously turn to commerce, industry and innovation, while expecting from the state only a stable framework guaranteeing the security of their activities and the protection of their rights:   « In the United States, as soon as a citizen has some enlightenment and some resources, he seeks to enrich himself in commerce and industry. All he asks of the State is not to disturb him in his labors and to ensure the fruit of them. »^[3]

Far from being opposed, these two readings constitute two sides of the same historical experience. Hamilton stresses the need for a state capable of directing, supporting and sometimes protecting the development of national productive capacities; Tocqueville highlights the vitality of a civil society whose economic dynamism is the main source of prosperity for the country. The whole of American economic history can be interpreted as the search for a balance between these two poles: on the one hand, confidence in private initiative and the creative power of the market; on the other, the conviction that certain industrial, technological or strategic capacities cannot be left to economic forces alone without jeopardizing the power of the nation.

In many respects, the developments observed since the beginning of the twenty-first century bear witness to the spectacular return of this founding problem. Faced with the rise of China, the geopolitical fragmentation of globalization, the vulnerabilities revealed by the financial, health or technological crises and the growing centrality of critical technologies in power relations, the United States seems to have gradually rediscovered Hamiltonian intuition without renouncing the Tocquevillian legacy. Contemporary industrial policy thus appears less as a rupture than as a modern reinterpretation of an old debate : how to reconcile the creative energy of the market with the requirements of economic sovereignty, national security and technological power?

In recent years, industrial policy has once again become one of the most debated subjects of international political economy. The successive adoption of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (2021), the CHIPS and Science Act (2022) and the Inflation Reduction Act (2022) has given rise to a vast literature devoted to the « return » of the state to the American economy. For many observers, these initiatives would mark a historic break with several decades dominated by deregulation, productive globalization and confidence in the self-regulatory mechanisms of the market.

However, such a reading calls for several reservations. First, it tends to overestimate the novelty of the policies undertaken since the early 2020s. It then leads to a simplified representation of American economic history, often reduced to the opposition between public intervention and the free market. However, from Alexander Hamilton’s founding reflections on manufacturing to the major scientific and technological programs of the Cold War and then with the voluntary and open emergence of the Internet, the federal government has constantly participated in the construction of the productive, technological and industrial capacities that have supported the rise and maintenance of American power.^[4]

The challenge is therefore not so much to explain an alleged return of industrial policy as to understand the new forms it takes in the context of the first quarter of the twenty-first century. For what distinguishes the contemporary period is not the very existence of federal economic intervention, but its growing integration into a broader vision combining competitiveness, innovation, national security and geopolitical rivalry.

This evolution has its origins in part in the debates that emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s around the notion of national competitiveness. Faced with Japan’s industrial performance, American trade deficits and the first signs of deindustrialization, a generation of economists, politicians and innovation experts wondered about the conditions for maintaining the United States’ economic leadership.^[5] Behind sometimes divergent approaches, the works of Robert Reich, Laura D’Andrea Tyson, Lester Thurow, Stephen Cohen and John Zysman converge around the same concern: the economic power of nations now depends on their ability to master technologies, skills, knowledge infrastructures and strategic sectors.^[6]

These reflections exerted a significant influence on the Clinton administration. While the latter remains committed to the opening up of trade and the internationalization of the American economy, it is simultaneously developing a renewed conception of public action based on support for innovation, technological infrastructure, research and development, and certain industrial sectors deemed decisive for national competitiveness.^[7]With hindsight, this period appears to be a particularly fruitful intellectual moment (including the major decision to open up to the entire world of research the infrastructure of Internet networks, already mentioned, set up until then by the academic and military-industrial institutions of the United States alone). Several contemporary analyses — including our own works published at the time in the Chroniques de la SEDEIS and at the Presses Universitaires de France, in the collection « Que sais-je? »^[8] — had already underlined the emergence of an original form of American strategic state, distinct from both European planning traditions and Asian models of industrial policy.⁷^[9]

However, the events that have followed one another since the beginning of the twenty-first century will profoundly change the scope of these debates. The attacks of September 11, 2001, the financial crisis of 2008, the spectacular rise of China, itself the result of a particularly robust Chinese industrial policy, the growing tensions around global supply chains, the Covid-19 pandemic and the acceleration of international technological competition are gradually leading the American authorities to redefine the very contours of national security.

The notion of economic power then ceased to be considered as a simple factor of prosperity. It is gradually becoming an essential attribute of national security. Semiconductors, artificial intelligence, batteries, rare earths, biotechnology, digital infrastructure and critical manufacturing capabilities are now seen as strategic resources on which the preservation of American leadership depends. In this context, industrial policy is no longer just about correcting certain market failures or supporting innovation. It aims to organize national economic resilience, reduce strategic dependencies, secure critical value chains, and preserve the technological foundations of American power.

The initiatives adopted since the early 2020s illustrate the culmination of this transformation. The CHIPS and Science Act aims to restore American capabilities in the field of semiconductors. The Inflation Reduction Act mobilizes considerable budgetary resources in order to promote the emergence of a competitive industrial base in energy transition technologies. Policies of productive relocation, export controls, restrictions on foreign investment and friend-shoring strategies bear witness to a growing link between industrial policy, trade policy and national security.

This development cannot be interpreted as the simple consequence of party alternations. Admittedly, the Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden administrations have favoured different instruments and sometimes pursued different objectives. But they are all, to varying degrees, part of a deeper movement to reaffirm the strategic role of the federal state in preserving the country’s productive, technological and industrial capacities.

Thus, the period between 2001 and 2025 corresponds to the gradual construction of a new American paradigm of economic security. This is based on the increasing integration of industrial policy, technological policy, trade policy and national security strategy within the same logic of power. Far from appearing as a parenthesis or a short-term reaction to the rise of China, this evolution is part of a longer intellectual and institutional trajectory of which Hamilton is the doctrinal starting point, the debates on national competitiveness of the Clinton years one of the founding moments, and the reindustrialization policies of the 2020s one of the most successful expressions. The study of its origins, its instruments, its sectoral priorities and its articulation with trade policy will thus allow a better understanding of the drivers of the return of the strategic state to the world’s leading power.

I. From Debates on National Competitiveness to the Emergence of Economic Security: The Foundations of the American Reorientation (1990-2025)

The scale of the industrial measures implemented by the United States since the early 2020s has often led observers to focus on recent disruptions: the rise of China, the Covid-19 pandemic, tensions on supply chains or the return of great power rivalry. These factors undoubtedly play a major role. However, they are not enough to explain the emergence of the new American industrial paradigm.

The transformations observed over the past two decades are part of a longer intellectual and political trajectory whose origins can be traced back to the debates on national competitiveness that developed at the end of the Cold War. In a context marked by Japanese industrial performance, the appearance of persistent trade deficits and the first signs of deindustrialization, a growing part of the American economic and political elites wondered about the conditions for maintaining the United States’ leadership in the world economy. The notions of innovation, technology, human capital and competitiveness are gradually becoming central categories of strategic analysis.^[10]

Under the Clinton administration, these reflections found an initial institutional translation. Without calling into question the general principles of trade openness or globalisation, the federal authorities are developing a new approach to the economic role of the State based on support for innovation, research, technological infrastructure and knowledge-intensive industrial sectors. Several observers identified the emergence of an original form of strategic state whose objectives were less to administer the economy than to strengthen the country’s structural capacity for competitiveness.^[11]

However, the events that marked the beginning of the twenty-first century gradually transformed this problem of national competitiveness. The attacks of September 11, 2001, the wars that followed, the financial crisis of 2008, the rise of China as a technological and industrial power, and then the vulnerabilities revealed by the Covid-19 pandemic led American officials to gradually broaden the notion of national security. Industrial, technological and productive issues are no longer perceived as simple determinants of growth; they are gradually becoming essential components of the country’s power and security.

This evolution marks the shift from a paradigm focused on national competitiveness to a paradigm of economic security. The challenge is no longer just to improve American economic performance in international competition, but to preserve the industrial, technological and productive capacities considered essential to the strategic autonomy of the United States. Semiconductors, digital infrastructure, artificial intelligence, biotechnology and critical supply chains are now understood through a national security logic that goes far beyond the traditional frameworks of industrial policy.

Understanding this transformation therefore presupposes a return to its intellectual, institutional and doctrinal origins. This first part will first analyze the debates surrounding national competitiveness under the Clinton administration before examining how the geopolitical, economic, and technological shocks of the first quarter of the twenty-first century have gradually led to the emergence of a new American paradigm of economic security.

A. The post-Cold War context and the Japanese challenge of the 1980s

When the 1990s began, the United States found itself in a paradoxical situation. On the geopolitical level, the collapse of the Soviet Union seems to consecrate the definitive victory of the American model and herald the advent of an international order largely structured around the principles of the market economy and liberal democracy. On the economic level, on the other hand, there are much fewer certainties. Japan’s industrial power, the growth of Asian exports, and the difficulties faced by several American manufacturing sectors are fueling a growing debate about the real foundations of national competitiveness.

Since the mid-1970s, the American economy has been confronted with a series of changes that have weakened some of the traditional drivers of its industrial dominance. International competition is intensifying in sectors previously considered bastions of American power: automotive, consumer electronics, electronic components, machine tools and industrial equipment. The accumulation of trade deficits with Japan is gradually fuelling the idea that the United States may be in a process of relative decline comparable to that experienced by the United Kingdom during the twentieth century.¹^[12]

By the end of the 1980s, this concern extended far beyond academic circles. The performance of the Japanese economy is impressing politicians, business leaders and part of the American public. The ability of Japanese industrial groups to conquer market share in high-tech sectors appears to be the manifestation of a particularly efficient economic model, based on cooperation between the State, companies, financial institutions and research centers. Analyses of the role of the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) met with considerable success in the United States.²^[13]

This period also saw the development of an abundant literature devoted to what is often presented as the « Japanese challenge ». Several authors question traditional interpretations of international trade based solely on comparative advantages and underline the growing importance of technological policies, training, industrial organization and innovation capacities in global economic competition. The very notion of national competitiveness is gradually becoming a central object of public debate.

In this context, Michael Porter’s work hashad a considerable influence. His analysis of the competitive advantage of nations highlights the role played by the institutional environment, infrastructure, innovation systems and business strategies in the economic success of industrialized countries.³^[14] Conversely, other economists, first and foremost Paul Krugman, vigorously contest the very relevance of the notion of national competitiveness, believing that it risks improperly transposing the reasoning to states. applicable to businesses.⁴^[15]

Beyond this theoretical controversy, one observation nevertheless tended to emerge at the turn of the 1990s: a nation’s economic performance cannot be reduced to the sole efficiency of market mechanisms. Innovative capacities, the quality of research institutions, the training of the workforce, the organization of industrial sectors and the diffusion of technologies appear to be determining variables of economic power. This development helps to rehabilitate the idea that the State can play an active role in creating the structural conditions for competitiveness.

The debate was all the more lively because several symbolic sectors of American power seemed to be threatened. The automotive industry is losing market share to Japanese manufacturers. The semiconductor industry is experiencing particularly intense competition. Concerns about the deindustrialization of certain regions of the country are multiplying. Industrial issues are gradually ceasing to be considered as sectoral issues; they become subjects of national policy.

This evolution is reinforced by the work of the Council on Competitiveness, an organization created in 1986 to reflect on ways to preserve the competitiveness of the United States. Its reports emphasize the need to strengthen investment in research, education, infrastructure and emerging technologies. They help to spread the idea that competitiveness is now a strategic issue comparable in some respects to traditional national security concerns.⁵^[16]

With hindsight, this period appears to be a decisive moment in the intellectual history of American economic policy. Admittedly, the debates of the 1980s and 1990s remain largely focused on the rivalry with Japan and the consequences of globalization. They do not anticipate China’s meteoric rise or the geopolitical upheavals of the early twenty-first century. They nevertheless raise several fundamental questions that remain at the heart of contemporary industrial policies: how to preserve the technological leadership of the United States? How can we maintain productive capacities in strategic sectors? What role can the State play in strengthening national competitiveness? And how can we articulate economic openness and the preservation of power?

The answers given to these questions under the Clinton administration would constitute the first intellectual and institutional laboratory for the strategic reorientation that would gradually assert itself over the following decades.

B. Debates on national competitiveness

One of the most remarkable features of the American economic debate at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s was the emergence of national competitiveness as a central category of economic and strategic analysis. Long perceived as a concept essentially applicable to companies, competitiveness is gradually becoming an attribute of nations themselves. This reflects growing concern about the ability of the United States to maintain its dominant position in the global economy in the face of rising Asian economies and intensifying international technological competition.

However, there is no consensus on the concept. As soon as it appeared in the public debate, it gave rise to important theoretical controversies. For some authors, national competitiveness is an essential concept for understanding new forms of international competition. For others, it is more of a political metaphor than a rigorous scientific category.

This opposition is illustrated by the controversy between Michael Porter and Paul Krugman. In The Competitive Advantage of Nations, Porter argues that countries’ economic performance depends largely on the quality of their productive environment, institutions, infrastructure, training and innovation systems, and interactions between firms, research centers, and governments. According to him, the prosperity of nations is based less on inherited comparative advantages than on their ability to build dynamic competitive advantages.^[17]

Krugman takes a radically different position. In an article that has become famous, he criticises the growing use of the notion of national competitiveness and considers that it leads to an erroneous vision of international economic relations. States are not companies; they do not pursue the same objectives and are not subject to the same constraints. For Krugman, the real determinant of prosperity remains domestic productivity, and not a hypothetical economic competition comparable to a permanent trade war.^[18]

However, this controversy masks a deeper phenomenon. Even when economists dispute the theoretical validity of the concept of national competitiveness, they generally recognize the growing importance of technological, educational, and institutional factors in wealth creation. The real question, then, is not so much whether nations are competitive as how they build the productive capacities that condition their future prosperity.

It is precisely in this perspective that the work of the Council on Competitiveness is taking place. Created in 1986 on the initiative of industrial, academic and political leaders, this organization quickly became one of the main think tanks on the American economic future. Its reports emphasize the importance of scientific research, technological innovation, infrastructure, training, and productive investment in maintaining American leadership.^[19]

Moreover, the Council on Competitiveness contributes to spreading the idea that industrial issues can no longer be separated from power issues. Advanced technologies, manufacturing capabilities, and innovation systems are now emerging as strategic resources on which the United States’ international standing depends. This approach already foreshadowed several themes that would become central in the decades to come: technological dependencies, industrial sovereignty, supply chain resilience and economic security.

In this respect, the American debates of the 1990s are remarkably unique. In contrast to European traditions of industrial policy, which are often associated with sectoral planning or direct state intervention in the productive apparatus, American thinking favours a more indirect approach. The objective is not to appoint « national champions » or to substitute the administration for market mechanisms. Rather, it is about building innovation capabilities, scientific infrastructure, and technology ecosystems that allow U.S. companies to maintain their competitive edge.

This distinction is essential to understanding the subsequent evolution of American industrial policy. From the Clinton years onwards, public intervention was mainly conceived as an instrument for strengthening national capacities rather than as a mechanism for administrative management of the economy. This conception remains widely present in contemporary policies, even when the amounts of finance mobilized reach unprecedented levels.

With hindsight, the debates on national competitiveness thus appear to be a founding moment. They are helping to shift the center of gravity of American economic thinking: the question is no longer just how to allocate resources efficiently in a market economy, but how to preserve the technological, industrial, and scientific bases of national power in an increasingly competitive international environment.

This evolution directly prepares the analyses developed by Robert Reich, Laura D’Andrea Tyson and Lester Thurow. All three will contribute, each in their own way, to broadening the thinking on competitiveness by focusing on human capital, the knowledge economy, strategic competition and the role of high-tech industries in the future prosperity of the United States. Their work constitutes one of the most important intellectual foundations of the economic reorientation initiated under the Clinton administration.

C. The Doctrinal Contributions of Robert Reich, Laura D’Andrea Tyson and Lester Thurow

Beyond the debates on national competitiveness, the years preceding Bill Clinton’s arrival in the White House were marked by the emergence of a set of reflections that contributed to a profound renewal of the analysis of the relationship between economy, technology and power. Among the many authors who participated in this movement were the personalities of Robert Reich, Laura D’Andrea Tyson and Lester Thurow, who occupied a special place that had already been noticed. Their work, although different in its methods and conclusions, converges around the same intuition: in a globalized economy based on knowledge, the prosperity of nations depends more and more on their ability to master technologies, develop the skills of their workforce and organize efficient innovation systems.

This reflection is part of a context marked by the transition to what is then described as a « knowledge economy ». Technological transformations, the spread of information technology, the rise of digital networks and the increasing internationalization of productive activities are leading to the questioning of traditional representations of economic advantage. Natural resources, labour costs and the size of the domestic market appear to be less and less sufficient to explain international economic hierarchies. Attention is now focused on the learning, innovation and adaptability capacities of national economies.

Robert Reich, former director of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, then an antitrust specialist, is undoubtedly the one who most clearly expresses this change. In The Work of Nations, published in 1991, he argues that the wealth of nations now depends less on the location of industrial activities than on the ability to produce, organize and mobilize knowledge, forging the concept of symbolic analysts for the most innovative entrepreneurs.^[20] According to him, the most strategic jobs are those that require high analytical, creative and interpersonal skills. American competitiveness is therefore based above all on the quality of the education system, research, continuing education and knowledge infrastructures. This approach leads Reich to propose a redefinition of the economic role of the state. The government must no longer seek to protect certain industries or markets, but rather to strengthen the collective capacities that allow American companies and workers to enter the most dynamic segments of the world economy. Investment in education, scientific research, technological infrastructure and human capital is thus becoming a strategic imperative. This conception would exert an important influence on several orientations of the Clinton administration, which made Robert Reich its Secretary of Labor (in practice corresponding in the United States to a Secretary of Industry).^[21]

Laura D’Andrea Tyson develops a different but complementary perspective. His work on high-tech industries and international competition highlights the limitations of traditional models of international trade when applied to innovation-based sectors.^[22] In these areas, economies of scale, learning effects, technological externalities and massive investments in research and development create situations in which public intervention can have a lasting influence on the international distribution of productive activities.

In particular, Tyson points out that international competition is not only between companies but also between national innovation systems. The performance of firms depends closely on the scientific, educational, financial and institutional ecosystems in which they operate. This analysis helps to legitimize public action aimed at strengthening national technological capacities without calling into question the fundamental principles of the market economy.

This reflection is of particular importance for the understanding of contemporary industrial policies. Several of the arguments used today to justify public support for semiconductors, clean technologies or artificial intelligence were already formulated early in work on high-tech industries in the early 1990s.

Lester Thurow adopts a more explicitly geo-economic approach. In Head to Head, he describes the entry into a new phase of global economic rivalry where nations compete less by military power than by their ability to master advanced technologies, develop their industrial base and improve their productivity.^[23] For Thurow, international economic competition now has a strategic dimension comparable to that previously had in military confrontations.

His analysis emphasizes the central role of long-term investments in research, education, infrastructure, and emerging technologies. It also highlights the risks associated with over-reliance on spontaneous market mechanisms to ensure the preservation of essential productive capacities. Without advocating central planning of the economy, Thurow advocates for more proactive public action to support sectors that are decisive for future prosperity.

These three authors thus contribute, each in their own way, to shifting the center of gravity of American economic thinking. The question is no longer only that of the allocative efficiency of markets but that of the production of national capacities for innovation and competitiveness. The state appears less and less as a simple arbiter responsible for guaranteeing the proper functioning of competition and more and more as an actor capable of strengthening the structural foundations of economic power.

The influence of these analyses on the Clinton administration is considerable. Robert Reich became Secretary of Labor between 1993 and 1997 while Laura D’Andrea Tyson successively chaired the Council of Economic Advisers to the President of the United States and then the National Economic Council. Academic debates on competitiveness, innovation and critical technologies thus penetrate directly into the federal decision-making centres at the highest level.^[24]

With hindsight, however, it appears that these authors also underestimated some major transformations in the world economy. Their work remains largely structured by the perception of Japan as the United States’ main strategic competitor. They do not anticipate the extent of China’s integration into the global economy or the speed with which it will become a major technological, industrial, and geopolitical rival. Their thinking also remains largely compatible with the dominant assumptions of liberal globalization in the 1990s, which are based on the idea of growing economic interdependence between the great powers.

However, this limitation should not hide their fundamental contribution. The notions of human capital, the knowledge economy, technological competition, and national innovation systems that they helped to popularize are still essential components of American strategic thinking today. From this perspective, the debates of the Clinton years appear as one of the main intellectual laboratories of the contemporary paradigm of economic security that now structures U.S. industrial policy.

D. The Clinton administration or the first milestones of the American strategic state

Bill Clinton’s arrival in the White House in 1993 was a pivotal moment in the evolution of contemporary American economic policy. Without breaking with the general principles of trade openness and globalization, the new Democratic administration introduced a significant shift in the conception of the economic role of the federal government. The latter is no longer perceived solely as a guarantor of the proper functioning of markets, but as an actor likely to actively contribute to the construction of the structural conditions of national competitiveness.

This reorientation is not the result of a unified doctrine developed ex ante. Rather, it is the result of the convergence of several intellectual influences, administrative experiences and economic constraints. The debates of the 1980s on American industrial decline, the rise of Japanese competition and work on national competitiveness provide the general framework for reflection. Economists close to the Democratic Party, such as Robert Reich, Laura D’Andrea Tyson or Ira Magaziner, play a decisive role in translating these analyses into public policy instruments.^[25]

(a) The institutionalization of national competitiveness

One of the first manifestations of this shift was the creation of the National Economic Council (NEC) in 1993. Inspired by the model of the National Security Council, this new body placed at the heart of the White House aims to coordinate all federal economic policies from a strategic perspective. It institutionally reflects the idea that economic, technological and industrial issues must be approached in an integrated and non-sectoral manner.

In this system, because of their positions as members of the cabinet of the President of the United States, Robert Reich and Laura D’Andrea Tyson occupy a central position. Their role is not limited to economic expertise: they contribute to structuring a global vision of American competitiveness based on the articulation between human capital, innovation and technological transformation. Ira Magaziner, a close advisor to the president, plays an important role in the design of cross-cutting industrial and technological strategies. This institutional architecture reflects a more profound evolution: national competitiveness is becoming a principle of organization of federal public action. It is no longer just one objective among others of economic policy, but a general framework for interpreting public choices.

b) The construction of a national innovation policy

As an extension of this institutionalization, the Clinton administration put in place several instruments designed to strengthen the innovation capacities of the American economy. The Technology Reinvestment Project, the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) and especially theAdvanced Technology Program (ATP) embody this new approach to public intervention.

These measures are based on a common logic: it is not a question of substituting the State for companies in the production or selection of technologies, but of correcting market failures linked to long-term investments in research and development, particularly in the upstream phases of innovation. The objective is to promote the dissemination of generic technologies, to support cooperation between companies, universities and public laboratories, and to strengthen the innovation capacities of the American industrial fabric. At the same time, the launch of the National Information Infrastructure illustrates the desire to structure an environment conducive to the development of digital technologies. This strategy, sometimes referred to as a « national technology strategy », marks an explicit recognition of the role of intangible infrastructure in economic competitiveness.

From this perspective, American industrial policy does not take the form of sectoral planning, but that of a set of horizontal instruments aimed at strengthening systemic capacities for innovation.

c) Strategic sectors: aeronautics, space and defence industries

While the Clinton administration favoured a horizontal approach to innovation policy, certain sectors nevertheless remained at the heart of federal strategic concerns. In this respect, aeronautics, space and the defence industries are privileged areas of articulation between industrial policy, national security and technological competitiveness.

The aeronautics sector is a particularly clear illustration of this hybrid logic. On the one hand, it is integrated into international competitive dynamics, particularly in the face of the emergence of Airbus as a structuring competitor to Boeing. On the other hand, it remains closely linked to defence programmes and public investment in research and development. This duality explains the maintenance of indirect but massive public support for industry, in particular through military orders, dual research programmes and technological partnerships.

The space and defence industries are part of a similar logic. Heirs to the Cold War, they experienced a phase of recomposition in the 1990s marked by the reduction of military budgets, but also by the reorientation towards dual technologies. The objective is less to maintain autonomous industrial capacities than to preserve critical segments of technological sovereignty.

In this context, the analyses developed at the time on American aeronautical policy already underlined the specificity of a model in which public intervention, although not very visible, remains structuring for high-tech industries.^[26]

d) Lessons learned from a strategic laboratory

All of these developments make it possible to identify several structuring features of the Clinton administration’s economic policy. First of all, the federal state appears less as a direct producer of goods or services than as an architect of capabilities. Its role is to structure the conditions for innovation, to support long-term investments and to promote interactions between public and private actors.

Secondly, economic policy is gradually being redefined around the notion of systemic competitiveness. It is no longer just a question of guaranteeing the efficiency of markets, but of strengthening all the factors that condition long-term economic performance: education, research, infrastructure, technological innovation and industrial organization.

Finally, this period marks the emergence of a new articulation between economic policy, technological policy and strategic considerations. Although not yet explicitly formulated as a doctrine of economic security, this convergence foreshadowed subsequent developments that would lead, after 2001, to a profound reconfiguration of American industrial policies.

With hindsight, the Clinton administration thus appears to be a veritable laboratory of the contemporary American strategic state. It does not break with the paradigm of liberal globalization, but it gradually changes its contours by reintroducing the idea that economic power is based on structured national capacities actively supported by public action.

E. The limits of the national competitiveness paradigm

While the debates on national competitiveness and the first changes in economic policy under the Clinton administration have made it possible to reintroduce the question of productive capacity at the heart of American public thinking, this paradigm nevertheless carries significant structural limits. These limits gradually appeared during the 1990s and were fully revealed at the turn of the twenty-first century.

A first limitation is the persistence of a still largely dual representation of the world economy. Analyses of national competitiveness, even in their most sophisticated versions, remain mostly structured by the implicit reference to the rivalry between the United States, Europe and Japan. This framework, which is relevant to understanding the tensions of the 1980s and early 1990s, quickly proved to be unsuited to the recomposition of the world economy, marked by the accelerated integration of new major industrial players.^[27]

The rise of China is a decisive tipping point in this respect. The gradual integration of the Chinese economy into global value chains, accelerated from the late 1990s, profoundly transformed the conditions of international competition. It introduces a systemic player whose scale, speed of growth and industrial strategy exceed the analytical frameworks forged in the previous period. However, this transformation is largely underestimated by mainstream approaches to national competitiveness, which continue to view globalization as an essentially cooperative and balanced process.^[28]

A second limitation is the strong confidence placed in the stabilizing virtues of economic globalization during the 1990s. In a large part of the literature, the intensification of trade, the diffusion of technologies and the growing interdependence of economies are perceived as factors of convergence and pacification of international relations. This hypothesis leads to minimizing the risks of geoeconomic fragmentation, critical dependencies or strategic rivalries around sensitive technologies.

From this perspective, industrial policy is still thought of primarily as an instrument for improving economic performance, and not as a lever for reducing strategic vulnerabilities. The dimension of economic security, in the contemporary sense of the term, is still largely implicit.

A third limitation concerns the insufficient consideration of the systemic effects of globalized value chains. The logic of international specialization and cost optimization leads to an increasing fragmentation of production processes, without fully anticipating the consequences of this fragmentation in terms of technological, industrial and logistical dependencies. The vulnerabilities associated with the concentration of certain strategic products in a small number of countries or companies still occupy only a marginal place in the analyses of the period.^[29]

Finally, the paradigm of national competitiveness remains largely focused on an economic logic, even when it integrates technological or institutional dimensions. The issue of security, understood as the ability to preserve essential industrial and technological assets in a situation of crisis or geopolitical rivalry, is not yet fully integrated. This absence partly explains the difficulty of anticipating the subsequent transformation of American industrial policy into an instrument of economic security.

These limitations do not cancel out the contributions of the debates of the 1990s. On the contrary, they reveal its historical significance. By reintroducing the question of productive capacities, innovation, and critical technologies into economic analysis, this work provided an essential intellectual basis for the subsequent reconfiguration of American economic policy. But they remain inscribed in a specific historical moment, that of a globalization still perceived as largely integrative and of an international system dominated by the idea of a « unipolar moment ».^[30]

With hindsight, this configuration appears transitory. The shocks of the early twenty-first century — the attacks of September 11, 2001, the financial crisis of 2008, the rise in trade and technology tensions, the Covid-19 pandemic — will gradually transform these limits into central issues in American economic policy. It is from this rereading that a new paradigm is gradually taking hold: that of economic security, in which industrial policy becomes an explicit instrument of power and strategic resilience.^[31]

II. From Competitiveness to Economic Security: The Construction of an American Strategic State (2001-2025)

The period opened by the attacks of September 11, 2001 marks a decisive turning point in the history of contemporary American economic policy. Without constituting an immediate break in the instruments of industrial policy, these events inaugurated a gradual but profound transformation of the intellectual framework in which the relations between the economy, technology and national security were conceived.

While the debates of the 1990s had largely structured economic policy around the notion of national competitiveness, the 2000s saw the emergence of a rereading of these issues through the prism of strategic vulnerability. Globalization, long perceived as a vector of efficiency and convergence, is gradually becoming analyzed as a potential source of critical dependencies. Globalized value chains, technological externalities and industrial interdependencies are now understood from the perspective of resilience and economic security. This reconfiguration does not occur in a linear manner. It is the result of the superimposition of several shocks: wars of terrorism, the 2008 financial crisis, trade and technological tensions with China, and then the Covid-19 pandemic. Each of these events contributes to expanding the scope of national security to include industrial, technological and logistical dimensions that were previously relatively peripheral.

In this context, American industrial policy is undergoing a gradual change: from a set of instruments mainly oriented towards supporting innovation and competitiveness, it is becoming an explicit mechanism for securing critical productive capacities. This evolution has led to the emergence of a real economic security paradigm in the 2020s, in which the federal government fully assumes a role as a strategic architect of value chains and essential technologies.^[32]

This second part traces the stages of this transformation, from the gradual broadening of the notion of national security in the early 2000s to the contemporary structuring of an assumed American strategic state, articulating industrial policy, trade policy and geopolitical strategy.

A. The post-September 11 tipping point: national security and the extension of the economic field

The opening of the twenty-first century is a moment of profound reconfiguration of American strategic thinking, not immediately perceptible in its economic instruments, but decisive in the transformation of the intellectual categories that structure public policy. The attacks of September 11, 2001 did not only produce a security shock; They involve a gradual, but lasting, extension of the perimeter of national security to areas that until then had been mainly a matter of economic or industrial rationality.

In the 1990s, American thinking on national competitiveness remained largely organized around a relatively stable distinction between the economic and security spheres. Even if some studies, particularly those from the fields of defence or dual technology, had already sketched out a rapprochement between industrial innovation and strategic power, these two worlds remained conceptually distinct. Economics was a matter of performance, security of protection against exogenous threats.^[33]

September 11 introduced a break in this intellectual architecture. The vulnerability revealed by the attacks leads to an extensive rereading of the notion of critical infrastructure, which is gradually becoming a central object of the doctrine of homeland security. This category is not limited to physical or energy networks; It gradually encompasses the communication systems, information technologies, software infrastructures and, more broadly, the industrial devices essential to the functioning of the modern economy.^[34]

This shift is fundamental: it means that the economy is no longer just an autonomous field of activity whose performance must be optimized, but a set of potentially vulnerable systems whose continuity directly conditions national security. The federal state is thus led to integrate economic dimensions into its security architecture, initiating a process of hybridization of public rationalities.^[35]

Initially, however, this evolution remains partial and still largely framed by the dominant economic paradigm. The Bush administrations are pursuing a generally supportive macroeconomic stance toward market mechanisms, free trade, and financial openness. But this continuity masks a more discreet and structural transformation: the multiplication of security measures for sensitive technologies, the strengthening of export controls in certain strategic sectors, and the growing attention paid to critical industrial dependencies.

Information technologies, communication networks and certain industrial infrastructures are gradually becoming objects of strategic surveillance. The emergence of cybersecurity as an autonomous domain reflects this evolution: the line between military security, internal security and economic security is beginning to blur.

This dynamic is part of a broader movement to redefine American power in a post-bipolar world. Far from an international system stabilized around economic and normative unipolarity, the United States is gradually discovering the persistence of systemic vulnerabilities linked to global interdependence. Globalization, initially thought of as a vector of efficiency and diffusion of the American model, now also appears as a potential source of strategic exposure.^[36]

The industrial sector is no exception to this reinterpretation. Globalized value chains, largely optimized on cost and flexibility criteria, are now perceived as likely to create critical points of dependence. This awareness was still widespread in the 2000s, but it paved the way for the clearer changes that would take place after the financial crisis of 2008 and, above all, with the rise of China.

Thus, the tipping point opened by September 11 lies not only in the fight against terrorism, but in a more profound transformation: the gradual extension of the notion of national security to all the material conditions for the functioning of economic power. This movement inaugurated a logic that would become central in the following decade, that of economic security, in which the stability of productive, technological and logistical systems was integrated into the very definition of sovereignty.

B. The 2008 financial crisis and the rehabilitation of the state as a systemic stabilizer

The 2008 financial crisis was a major turning point in the contemporary evolution of American economic policy, not only because of its macroeconomic scope, but above all because of the profound doctrinal changes it induced in the conception of the role of the state. Unlike the shock of September 11, 2001, which mainly affected the security sphere by gradually expanding the perimeter of national security, the financial crisis is bringing about a direct transformation at the very heart of American economic rationality: it calls into question the ability of markets to spontaneously ensure systemic stability.^[37]

In the years preceding the crisis, the dominant doctrine remained structured by a strong confidence in the self-regulatory mechanisms of financial markets and in the allocative efficiency of financial innovations. Global financial integration, credit expansion, and the increasing sophistication of derivatives are then interpreted as factors in risk diffusion, increased liquidity, and intertemporal optimization of growth. Macroeconomic stability is largely thought of as an endogenous product of market rationality, under the assumption that private actors have a sufficient capacity to internalize systemic risk.

The 2008 crisis brutally invalidated this representation. The collapse of the shadow banking system, the widespread use of securitized products and the rapid spread of payment defaults on the American real estate markets reveal the existence of massive systemic imbalances, long invisible by risk management models. The collapse of Lehman Brothers acts as a trigger for global contagion, highlighting the critical interdependencies between financial institutions, capital markets, credit rating agencies and global macroeconomic stability.^[38]

Beyond its financial dimension, the crisis also reveals a major epistemological flaw: the inability of dominant analytical frameworks to integrate network effects, extreme correlations in stressful situations, and the nonlinear dynamics of globalized financial systems. It is therefore a crisis of liquidity, solvency and risk representation.

In the face of this collapse, the federal government’s intervention took on a scale unprecedented since the Great Depression. The stabilization frameworks that have been implemented—bank rescue programs, liquidity guarantees, massive recapitalizations, fiscal stimulus policies, and the quantitative expansion of the Federal Reserve—reflect a dramatic reaffirmation of the government’s ability to act as the ultimate guarantor of systemic stability.^[39] This intervention is not limited to a conjunctural stabilization function: it reactivates an implicit Keynesian conception of the role of the state as the ultimate insurer of the continuity of the economic system.

This rehabilitation was accompanied by a significant doctrinal shift. The crisis has disrupted confidence in financial self-regulatory mechanisms and is helping to upgrade public instruments for macroprudential supervision, systemic regulation and capital flow control. It also marks a rise in the notion of systemic risk, which is gradually becoming a central category of American economic policy.

This development is particularly decisive for the subsequent trajectory of industrial policy. By revealing the fragility of financial and productive interdependencies, the 2008 crisis initiated a broader awareness of the risks associated with the global fragmentation of value chains. These are no longer analysed solely as mechanisms for economic efficiency, but gradually as structures that potentially generate systemic vulnerabilities in the event of a financial, logistical or geopolitical shock.

In this context, the federal state regains greater legitimacy not only as a regulator of the markets, but as a guarantor of the structural stability of the economic system as a whole. This rehabilitation does not immediately take the form of an explicit industrial policy, but it constitutes an essential condition for its possibility: it reopens the intellectual and institutional space for public intervention in the real economy, particularly in the critical technological and industrial sectors.^[40]

Thus, the 2008 crisis must be interpreted not as a simple short-term break, but as a moment of structural recomposition of the role of the state. From a progressively marginalized player in the logic of deregulation of previous decades, it is once again becoming a central systemic stabilizer, responsible for ensuring the overall resilience of the American economy. This transformation directly prepares for subsequent developments: the re-emergence of industrial policies under Obama, trade conflict under Trump, and then the explicit formalization of the economic security paradigm under Biden.

C. The Obama Administrations I and II: From Crisis Management to the Gradual Rehabilitation of Industrial Policy (2009-2016)

The two Obama administrations occupy a pivotal place in the recent history of American industrial policy. Often overshadowed by the scale of the initiatives undertaken under Biden or by the geo-economic conflict introduced by Donald Trump, they nevertheless constitute a decisive moment in the reorientation of federal economic action. Heir to the most serious financial crisis since the 1930s, as mentioned above, Barack Obama must simultaneously stabilize the financial system, support employment, preserve national industrial capacities and prepare the technological positioning of the United States in the sectors that will structure future growth.^[41] In this context, the Democratic administration is developing an approach that extends several intuitions formulated under Clinton — the importance of innovation, research, human capital and advanced technologies — while giving them a more directly industrial dimension.^[42] The rescue of the automotive industry, massive investments in energy infrastructure, support for clean technologies, the rise of public-private partnerships in research, and the strengthening of federal innovation programs testify to a gradual return of the state as a producer of economic capacity.^[43]

However, this evolution remains largely pragmatic and is not yet accompanied by a real doctrine of industrial sovereignty.^[44] The main objective remains economic reconstruction after the crisis and the maintenance of American technological leadership in a context of growing international competition.^[45] Initiatives such as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, renewable energy support programs, the creation of the first networks of Manufacturing Innovation Institutes and the development of the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership nevertheless reflect a growing awareness of the importance of national productive capacities.^[46] Through these measures, the idea is already emerging that competitiveness does not only depend on scientific innovation but also on the control of value chains, industrial processes and technological ecosystems. While China is not yet at the heart of the official discourse as it will become later, its rise in industrial, commercial and technological power already constitutes the strategic background for many federal initiatives.^[47]

The Obama years also saw the emergence of a set of debates that directly foreshadowed the concerns of the following decade.^[48] The consequences of deindustrialization since the 1990s, the increasing concentration of global manufacturing capacity in East Asia, the fragility of some supply chains, and questions about maintaining an advanced industrial base in the United States are beginning to occupy an increasing place in the work of federal agencies, universities, and specialized think tanks.^[49] The publication of several reports by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), the National Science and Technology Council and the National Research Council helped to rehabilitate the very notion of manufacturing policy in a country that had long presented itself as the embodiment of post-industrial capitalism.^[50]

At the same time, the energy policy undertaken by the Obama administration does not only pursue environmental objectives. It also responds to considerations of industrial competitiveness and technological leadership. Investments in batteries, smart grids, electric vehicles, renewables, and storage technologies herald many of the priorities that will be taken up, scaled up, and systematized under the Biden administration.^[51] With hindsight, it is clear that many of the industrial sectors supported by the Inflation Reduction Act have their origins in the programmes tested between 2009 and 2016.

Finally, the Obama years mark an even more profound intellectual evolution. Under the combined effect of the financial crisis, the rise of China and the acceleration of technological transformations, the idea that domestic productive capacities constitute an element of economic power is gradually beginning to reappear in the American strategic debate. Without going as far as the logic of economic security that will prevail after 2017, the Obama administration is helping to reintroduce into public thinking notions such as industrial resilience, strategic innovation, critical technologies or systemic competitiveness.^[52] In this respect, the Obama administrations are less a parenthesis than a transition: they are extending the innovative state inherited from Clinton while preparing for the emergence of the strategic state that will assert itself successively under Trump and Biden. American industrial policy then gradually ceased to be a simple support for innovation to become one of the instruments of economic resilience, national competitiveness and, soon, economic security.

D. The emergence of the Chinese factor as a systemic variable of American economic security

From the 2010s onwards, the rise of China was a decisive factor in the recomposition of American economic policy, in that it gradually transformed a relationship of classic commercial competition into a relationship of systemic rivalry. This shift is not the result of an isolated event but of a cumulative process of economic integration, accelerated industrialization and technological upgrading, accompanied by a continuous consolidation of China’s industrial policy and strategic regulation instruments.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, China was still widely analysed as an emerging economy inserted into the dynamics of productive globalisation, benefiting from the externalities of the international fragmentation of value chains. However, this interpretation is gradually proving insufficient as a specific model of institutional capitalism is structured, in which the state plays a central role not only in correcting market failures, but in the very structuring of markets and industrial trajectories.

The work on the developmentalist state has long shown that some East Asian states have mobilized powerful public instruments to guide the industrial and technological transformation of their economies.^[53] In the Chinese case, this logic takes on a systemic dimension, combining strategic planning, sectoral industrial policy, control of capital flows and orientation of innovations towards power objectives. The result is an institutional configuration in which competition is not suppressed, but framed and structured by the goals of economic and technological sovereignty.

This transformation is gradually leading to a rereading of the very nature of international competition. This ceases to be understood as a simple rivalry between firms and becomes a competition between institutional architectures of capitalism. Contemporary analyses of the Chinese economy thus highlight the state’s ability to coordinate public and private actors in strategic sectors such as semiconductors, digital platforms, telecommunications and advanced industrial infrastructure.^[54]

In this context, the United States is gradually reconfiguring its foreign economic policy instruments. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) becomes a central screening mechanism for foreign investments in sectors deemed sensitive, including dual technologies, critical infrastructure and defence industries. At the same time, export controls are being strengthened in order to limit the transfer of advanced technologies to Chinese players considered strategic.

This evolution marks a major conceptual change: American foreign economic policy ceases to be exclusively oriented towards trade liberalization and becomes an instrument for managing strategic dependencies. Economic interdependence is thus gradually reclassified as a potential vulnerability, likely to be instrumentalized in a context of systemic rivalry.

In this perspective, the recent literature on weaponized interdependence highlights the way in which the structure of global economic networks can be mobilized as a lever of coercion by states occupying nodal positions in these networks.^[55] The United States, as the center of the global financial and technological system, has precisely such levers, which explains the rise of policies to control technological, industrial, and financial flows.

This dynamic is also illuminated by the work devoted to the evolution of competition law in a context of strategic globalization. Harry First thus points out that the traditional instruments of antitrust, initially designed to regulate domestic markets, have been gradually reinterpreted in the light of the challenges of global economic power, particularly in the face of large digital platforms and companies backed by long-term state strategies.^[56]

In this context, global value chains become a central object of the economic security strategy. The semiconductors, digital technologies, telecommunications equipment and advanced industrial infrastructure sectors are emerging as critical nodes of mutual dependence, where the geographical concentration of certain production capacities – particularly in East Asia – is now perceived as a major strategic risk.

This strategic rereading was reinforced by the rise in trade and technological tensions between Washington and Beijing from the end of the 2010s. Restrictions on certain Chinese technology companies, targeted sanctions and industrial relocation policies reflect the gradual emergence of a logic of selective decoupling, focused on technologies deemed critical to national security.

In this context, our recent analysis of Chinese competition law highlights a decisive point: far from being a simple adaptive player in globalization, China has gradually built a system of state-supervised competition, in which market rules are structured by long-term industrial and strategic objectives.^[57] This dynamic contributes precisely to reinforcing the American perception of a systemic rivalry that goes far beyond the commercial sphere.

Thus, China is gradually becoming, in the field of American doctrine, not only an economic competitor, but an alternative organizer of industrial and technological globalization. This transformation is decisive: it leads to the reconfiguration of American foreign economic policy instruments and directly prepares the formalization of the economic security paradigm in the 2020s, with Democrats and Republicans being complementary, if not explicitly on the same de facto axis.

E. Fluctuations in U.S. Industrial Policy from the 1990s to the 2020s

A retrospective examination of the evolution of American industrial policy since the early 1990s reveals not a linear trajectory, but a succession of three distinct historical configurations that correspond to as many conceptions of the economic role of the federal government.

The first phase, which extends roughly from the Clinton administration to the end of the George W. Bush presidency (1993-2008), can be described as an « invisible innovative state ». During this period, public intervention remained substantial but largely implicit. Federal funding for research, innovation and advanced technologies continues to play a key role through institutions such as the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), DARPA and the National Laboratories. However, this public action is not generally presented as an industrial policy in the traditional sense of the term. It is more in line with a logic of support for innovation, competitiveness and knowledge-based growth. The State is already acting as a key player in the technological transformation, but without explicitly claiming an industrial steering function. It is a kind of market-compatible innovation state, reconciling public intervention and trust in market mechanisms.

The second phase corresponds to the years 2009-2016 and opens in the exceptional context of the global financial crisis. The Obama administration then reactivated more visible intervention instruments in order to stabilize the economy, support investment and encourage the emergence of new growth sectors. Stimulus programs, investments in infrastructure, energy technologies, and clean industries point to a rise in public action. However, this reorientation remains largely motivated by the imperatives of emerging from the crisis and economic reconstruction. Industrial policy then appears as an instrument of stabilization and modernization rather than as a tool of national power. This period can thus be interpreted as that of a « post-crisis stabilising state », characterised by a crisis-driven industrial policy whose primary objective remains the restoration of growth and employment.

The third phase, which runs from 2017 to 2026, marks a transformation of a completely different scale. Under the Trump and then Biden administrations, industrial policy gradually ceased to be a simple economic instrument and became a central element of American national strategy. The financial volumes mobilized have reached unprecedented levels, well over a trillion dollars when subsidies, tax credits, public guarantees and sectoral programs are aggregated. (see tables in Appendices 3 and 4).  Even more fundamentally, the boundaries between industrial policy, trade policy, technological policy and national security are tending to disappear. The rise of China, the vulnerabilities revealed by global value chains, competition in semiconductors, artificial intelligence and energy technologies are all contributing to the emergence of a real logic of economic security. The United States is thus entering the era of the « geo-economic strategic state », characterised by a security-driven industrial policy in which industrial capacities are now perceived as essential attributes of national power.

This periodization highlights a fundamental dynamic that is often neglected. American developments are not the result of a sudden return to industrial policy after several decades of absence. Rather, it corresponds to a gradual transformation of its nature and its purposes. Under Clinton, the focus is on innovation and competitiveness; under Obama, on economic stabilization and industrial reconstruction after the crisis; under Trump, on the geo-economic conflictualization of interdependencies; under Biden, finally, on the institutionalization of a large-scale industrial policy integrated into a global power strategy.

Therefore, the main conclusion that emerges from this historical trajectory is that the United States did not rediscover industrial policy during the 2020s. They have gradually transformed a state of innovation into a state of organized economic power, in which industrial, technological, commercial and security policies now tend to converge in the service of the same objective: the preservation of American leadership in an international environment that has become structurally more competitive and more conflictual.

III. From systemic rivalry to the strategic state: Trump, Biden and the formalization of economic security (2017-2025)

The period that began in 2017 marked a decisive shift in the trajectory of US industrial policy. After the gradual rise of systemic vulnerabilities revealed by the 2008 financial crisis, and then the awareness of the Chinese factor as an institutional and technological rival, the United States is making an explicit paradigm shift: economic competition can no longer be dissociated from national security imperatives.

This reconfiguration is not the result of a unified ex ante doctrine, but of a gradual sedimentation of legal, commercial, technological and industrial mechanisms. It reflects a growing hybridization between three rationalities that were previously partially distinct: the logic of the market, the logic of power and the logic of security.

Under the Trump I administration, this hybridization took the form of a direct conflictualization of economic interdependencies. Under the Biden administration, it is stabilizing and rationalizing itself in a coherent set of explicit industrial policies, articulating subsidies, targeted planning, and securing critical value chains. This sequence leads to the formalization of an integrated paradigm of economic security. The Trump II administration will further strengthen the geopolitical dynamics of US industrial policy, the main factor in the failure of the European trade armour, the geopolitical deficiency of which was demonstrated by the Turnberry Agreement in July 2025.

A. The Trump I Administration: The Strategic Conflictualization of Interdependencies (2017–2020)

The Trump administration represents a visible break in the liberal continuity of international trade, but this break must be interpreted less as an innovation ex nihilo than as the political activation of a diagnosis already largely constituted in previous decades: that of the structural vulnerability of American economic interdependencies in the face of the rise of China and the recomposition of global industrial hierarchies.

The essential novelty therefore does not lie in the perception of the problem, already formulated in part of the American literature on the relative decline of the industrial power of the United States,^[58] but in the transition from a logic of diffuse regulation to a logic of explicit strategic confrontation. International trade ceases to be conceived as a space of mutual optimization based on the gains of free trade, to become a field of asymmetrical power relations, in which industrial, technological and financial dependencies can be converted into instruments of constraint.

This reconfiguration is part of an older criticism of the hypothesis of the neutrality of international trade. As early as the 1990s and 2000s, some American authors had pointed out that globalization could produce asymmetric distributional effects and long-lasting industrial vulnerabilities, particularly in advanced manufacturing sectors.^[59] The Trump administration radicalizes this intuition by giving it an instrumental translation.

This evolution is manifested first of all by the partial questioning of traditional multilateral frameworks, in favor of a bilateral, transactional and asymmetrical approach to economic relations. The tariffs imposed on China from 2018 onwards are not just a sectoral protection instrument: they are part of a strategy to rebalance value chains structurally, aimed at reducing critical dependencies in strategic industrial sectors, including steel, aluminium, industrial equipment and certain technological components.

This pricing logic is accompanied by an increase in the legal and institutional dimension of foreign economic policy. The strengthening of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) by the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act (FIRRMA) marks a structural transformation of American doctrine: foreign investment is no longer considered neutral from an economic point of view, but as a potential carrier of technological, industrial and security risks. The extension of the scope to include minority investments and emerging technologies reflects an extension of the concept of national security to the economic sphere.

At the same time, export controls became a central instrument of American technology policy. The restrictions imposed on Chinese companies in the fields of semiconductors, telecommunications infrastructure and artificial intelligence reflect a growing awareness of the dual nature of advanced technologies – civilian and military. This evolution is particularly visible in the case of semiconductors, where the control of design and manufacturing chains is becoming an issue of technological sovereignty.^[60]

At the same time, the boundary between trade and defence policy is becoming structurally porous. As several analyses of contemporary American doctrine have shown, industrial policy and national security policy tend to converge in the same strategic rationality, where the control of productive capacities is integrated into the very definition of power.^[61]

This movement is accompanied by a major doctrinal requalification: economic interdependencies are no longer only analyzed as sources of allocative efficiency and growth, but as structures potentially vulnerable to forms of economic coercion. This inflection constitutes one of the intellectual pivots of the period, directly preparing the transformations of the 2020s.

From this perspective, the Trump II logic can be interpreted as a first political translation of the diagnosis formulated by Farrell and Newman under the concept of weaponized interdependence, according to which global economic networks can be mobilized as instruments of power by states occupying nodal positions in these global architectures.^[62] The United States, as the center of the global financial system and a central player in technological infrastructure, has precisely such structural levers.

Thus, far from being a simple protectionist episode or a unilateral drift, the Trump administration’s economic policy constitutes a phase of systemic transition. It transforms a diffuse structural concern — that of relative industrial decline and technological dependence — into explicit coercive instruments, but without yet producing a fully coherent industrial architecture. It thus opened up a space for recomposition that would be stabilized and institutionalized under the next administration.

B. The Biden Administration: Institutionalizing Industrial Policy and Strengthening Economic Security

The Biden administration marks a break of a different order: not the invention of economic conflict with China, but its institutionalization in a global strategic framework, stabilized and gradually integrated into federal doctrines of national security and economics. Where the Trump period introduces explicit and often transactional conflictuality, the Biden period builds a coherent architecture of public economic power.

This transformation is manifested first of all in the explicit rehabilitation of industrial policy as a legitimate instrument of federal public action. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the CHIPS and Science Act are the two structuring pillars of this new orientation. The first is organising a massive policy of subsidies and tax credits geared towards the energy transition and green industrial relocation; The second directly targets the securing and expansion of domestic semiconductor production capacities, considered critical infrastructures of American technological power.

This dual dynamic reflects a profound doctrinal change: industrial policy ceases to be an exceptional or corrective instrument and becomes a structural component of the national economic strategy. The federal government no longer intervenes solely to correct market failures, but to actively orient the productive structure of the economy in an environment of systemic competition.

This shift is part of a broader transformation of the American doctrine of economic security. The concept of economic security is gradually being integrated into the strategic documents of the Department of Commerce, the Department of the Treasury and the National Security Council, in line with the rise of concerns about critical value chains and technological dependencies.

In this context, globalization is no longer understood as a homogeneous process of integration but as a fragmented system, structured by logics of technological rivalry, industrial resilience and the securing of strategic flows. Friend-shoring and de-risking policies  reflect this inflection, by introducing an explicit political geography into the management of global value chains.

This evolution cannot be understood without reference to recent work on the transformation of American political capitalism. Contemporary literature points out that American industrial policy has experienced a marked comeback since the 2008 financial crisis, but that it is now reconfigured around national security and technological competitiveness objectives in a context of rivalry with China.^[63]

In this context, several analyses highlight that the IRA and the CHIPS Act are not isolated ruptures, but the culmination of a long recomposition of the federal state as a strategic player in the industrial and technological economy.^[64]

Thus, the Biden administration is not breaking with the dynamic initiated under Trump I; it ensures institutional stabilization and long-term projection. It transforms a fragmented set of measures into a structured paradigm of economic security, in which industrial policy, trade policy and technological policy become inseparable.^[65]

C. Towards the geopoliticization of industrial policy: from the economic tool to the instrument of power

All the developments analysed since the early 2000s are gradually leading to a qualitative transformation of American industrial policy: it has ceased to be a simple instrument for correcting market failures or providing sectoral support for innovation to become a central mechanism for power projection in an international environment characterised by systemic competition.

This evolution marks the explicit eruption of the geopolitical dimension at the heart of contemporary industrial policy. Choices of investment, subsidies, technological regulation or production location are no longer solely based on considerations of internal economic efficiency; As already indicated, they are now structured by objectives of national security, strategic resilience and positioning in the global hierarchy of powers.^[66]

Thus, industrial policy is gradually becoming a policy of structuring the international system itself, insofar as it contributes to the organization of technological dependencies, value flows and critical productive capacities.^[67] The challenge is no longer just to « produce more efficiently », but to determine who controls the tangible and intangible infrastructures of the world’s economic power.^[68]

This mutation can be analyzed as the convergence of three dynamics already identified: the requalification of interdependencies as strategic vulnerabilities, the rise of China as an alternative architecture of organized capitalism, and the reaffirmation of the American state as a central actor in the structuring of global value chains. Their combination produces a tipping point: industrial policy becomes a vector of applied geopolitics.

In this perspective, critical technological sectors — semiconductors, artificial intelligence, digital infrastructure, low-carbon energy — are no longer industries among others and become spaces of shared or disputed sovereignty, in which an essential part of the international hierarchy of powers is now at stake.^[69]

This evolution thus consecrates a major analytical reversal: where globalization had been thought of as a process of dilution of economic and political borders, it now appears as a system of organized fragmentation, structured by competing logics of industrial and technological power.

Box 1

The institutional architecture of American industrial policy

The institutional architecture of US industrial policy is summarized in the table in Annex 1. It is based on an organization that is no longer a simple functional division of public action, but a real system of production of economic power. At first glance, skills appear to be fragmented between specialized agencies — innovation (NSF, DARPA), trade (USTR, Department of Commerce), public finance and monetary policy (Treasury, Federal Reserve), economic security (CFIUS), or energy and technology industry (Department of Energy). However, this fragmentation is largely offset by a growing convergence of strategic goals.

Since the early 2000s, and even more so from the 2017–2025 period, these institutions have tended to align around a common objective: securing critical industrial capacities and managing economic interdependencies in an environment of systemic competition. The presidency plays a central strategic impetus role here, defining the major orientations (economic security, reindustrialization, technological competition), while Congress provides the normative and budgetary architecture of major industrial programs, in particular through recent measures such as the IRA or the CHIPS and Science Act.

In this system, some agencies occupy specific structuring positions. DARPA and, more broadly, the federal research ecosystem (NSF, NIH, national laboratories) ensure the production of disruptive innovation, while the Department of Energy becomes a central player in industrial investment in the energy transition. At the same time, the Department of Commerce and its Bureau of Industry and Security, as well as the Department of the Treasury via the Office of Foreign Assests Control (OFAC), ensure the restrictive and coercive dimension of foreign industrial policy, by controlling technology exports and sensitive financial flows respectively.

Finally, cross-cutting bodies such as the National Economic Council or CFIUS  ensure the systemic coherence of the whole, by articulating economic policy, national security and technological strategy. The Pentagon, for its part, retains a structuring role as the main public investor in dual technologies, thus consolidating the historical link between military innovation and industrial power.

This architecture as a whole thus bears witness to a major evolution: American industrial policy is no longer a sectoral area of public action, but a systemic function of the federal state, in which the economy, technology and national security tend to merge into a single geoeconomic rationality of power.

D. Trump Administration II: Towards the « Trump Corollary » of the Monroe Doctrine and the Integral Geopoliticization of Industrial Policy

The second Trump administration — or more broadly the doctrinal radicalization phase of economic Trumpism in the mid-2020s — marks a decisive intensification of the process of fusion between industrial policy, trade policy, and global geopolitical strategy. At this stage, industrial policy ceases to be a simple instrument of competitiveness or reindustrialization: it becomes an explicit vector for the geopolitical structuring of the world economic space.

This evolution is particularly visible in the reconfiguration of the Monroe Doctrine, which has been gradually reinterpreted in the contemporary American debate as a matrix of hemispheric power projection. Several press and research analyses have highlighted the resurgence of a broader reading of this doctrine, in which the Western Hemisphere is conceived by the United States as a strategic space to be protected from the influence of extra-hemispheric powers, notably China.^[70] Unfortunately, the European Union has not yet integrated this broader reading into the development of a range of instruments that are effectively operational to protect its industry, which continues to be emptied of its substance in an alarming manner day after day. 

In this context, The Hill highlights the transformation of the Monroe Doctrine into an instrument of broader economic policy and national security, stressing that its contemporary reactivation no longer concerns only the military or diplomatic dimension, but also the control of critical infrastructure, supply chains and foreign investment in strategic sectors.^[71] This reading contributes to stabilizing in the American public debate the idea of a true « contemporary corollary » to the Monroe Doctrine, adapted to a globalized and technologically integrated economy.

At the same time, an increasingly structured literature — particularly around Chatham House — proposes to conceptualize this evolution as the emergence of a « Monroe Economic Doctrine « , in which the United States seeks to reconfigure the Western Hemisphere as a privileged space for securing value chains, critical resources and strategic industrial infrastructures.^[72] The issue is no longer just territorial or diplomatic, but directly geoeconomic: it is a question of controlling the flow of raw materials, industrial processing capacities and the associated logistics networks.

This dynamic is particularly visible in the global competition around rare earths, lithium and critical metals, where the logic of national security now extends to the structuring of global supply chains. American trade policies are thus becoming inseparable from a strategy to secure the resources essential to the energy transition and advanced digital technologies.

In this context, the doctrinal dimension of economic Trumpism is made explicit in a more systematic way in certain circles close to American economic policy. Stephen Miran’s speech at the Hudson Institute in April 2025 offers a structured interpretation of the role of the United States in the global economy, insisting on the idea that the international system is based on asymmetries of burden related to the financing of global security and monetary stability, disproportionately borne by the American economy.^[73] This interpretation justifies a reconfiguration of trade instruments, particularly tariffs, as mechanisms for systemic rebalancing.

From this perspective, recent trade agreements must be interpreted not as instruments of liberalization, but as tools for the strategic selection of economic partners and the structuring of blocs compatible with American industrial interests. Our detailed analysis of the Turnberry Agreement in early 2026 illustrates precisely this evolution: it is less a classic trade agreement than a mechanism for recomposing transatlantic interdependencies in a logic of North American power.^[74]

All of these transformations converge towards a profound reconfiguration of American industrial policy, which is now inseparable from a global geopolitical strategy. This is based on three structuring pillars: the securing of critical resources, the partial reterritorialization of value chains and the structuring of economic blocs compatible with the objectives of American power.

Thus, the Trump II sequence can be interpreted as the culmination of a process of integral geopoliticization of industrial policy, in which economic instruments become tools of strategic projection, and in which the distinction between economy and national security tends to fade away in favor of a unified logic of power.

Box 2

Industrial policy, trade policy and power strategy: towards a new American technological mercantilism?

The evolution of the United States during the first quarter of the twenty-first century is characterized by a gradual blurring of the boundaries between industrial policy, trade policy, and national security. Far from being a brutal rupture, this recomposition is the result of a cumulative convergence, fuelled by successive crises, political alternations and the intensification of the systemic rivalry with China.

The Obama administration was the first moment of partial reactivation of federal industrial intervention in the wake of the 2008 crisis, notably through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and the Department of Energy’s programs. However, this phase remains dominated by a logic of macroeconomic stabilization, without an explicit doctrine of industrial power.

The turning point came with the Trump I and II administrations, which profoundly reconfigured the American reading of the international economy by introducing a logic of conflictualization of interdependencies. Tariff instruments, investment controls (CFIUS) and export controls are becoming central tools of a broader economic security strategy, in which trade is integrated into the logic of power.

The Biden administration then institutionalised an industrial policy on an unprecedented scale in terms of the financial amounts implemented (see table in Annex 3). It is based on the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act. The federal government is becoming a structuring player in global value chains, mobilizing subsidies, tax credits and industrial conditionalities to guide the location of productive capacities and accelerate the energy transition.

Beyond partisan alternations, a bipartisan consensus is gradually emerging around the figure of the strategic state. This is based on the increasing integration of productive relocation instruments (Buy American, reshoring, friend-shoring), pricing policies and technological control mechanisms. This convergence is shaping the contours of a hybrid model in which the logic of the market is framed by the imperatives of economic sovereignty and national security. The result is the emergence of a true contemporary technological mercantilism, where economic power is no longer measured solely in terms of efficiency, but also in terms of the control of value chains, critical technologies and strategic dependencies. The federal state thus appears as a central architect of global interdependencies, at the crossroads of economics, technology and geopolitics. The core of US industrial policy in the 2020s represents between $1,000 and $1,500 billion cumulated over 10 years (direct + fiscal + induced effects). The pivot is no longer the explicit budget but the fiscal and financial capacity of the federal state to direct private capital. The last table in Appendix 5 summarizing the aggregate estimate of the financing or industrial incentives of the American administrations since Bill Clinton underlines that the Trump II administration is not dismantling the Bidenomics. The rupture is more about the purpose of the instruments than about their scope. Where Biden mainly mobilized subsidies, tax credits and green investments to rebuild a national industrial base, Trump II tends to redirect comparable financial volumes towards a more explicitly geopolitical logic: manufacturing reindustrialization, mineral autonomy, technological security, control of value chains and mobilization of foreign trade as an instrument of power. By the 2030s, the difference between the two administrations could thus appear less as an opposition between intervention and non-intervention than as a divergence between two forms of strategic state : Biden’s investor state and Trump II’s integral geoeconomic state.

Conclusion

The evolution of American industrial policy since the early 2000s highlights a profound transformation in the relationship between economy, technology and power. What appears, at first glance, to be a recent return of the state to the economy — illustrated by the IRA, the CHIPS and Science Act or the mechanisms for securing critical supply chains — is in fact part of a long trajectory, whose intellectual and institutional roots go back to the debates on national competitiveness in the 1980s and 1990s.  when it’s not much higher in time.

The Clinton period was a particularly founding moment. It saw the work of Robert Reich, Laura D’Andrea Tyson and Lester Thurow in particular, and then through the institutional action of the National Economic Council and the first federal innovation policies, a first attempt to redefine the economic role of the state in a globalised economy. Without breaking with the horizon of liberal globalization, this phase nevertheless introduces a decisive idea: the economic performance of a nation depends systemically on its technological, industrial and organizational capacities, and cannot be left to market mechanisms alone.

The shocks of the early twenty-first century — terrorism, financial crises, the pandemic, geoeconomic tensions and the rise of China — will gradually transform this intuition into a structuring paradigm. National competitiveness, initially thought of as an issue of economic performance, is being reconfigured as a problem of economic security. The American federal government is no longer content to encourage innovation: it organizes, directs and protects the productive capacities deemed essential to the preservation of national power in an international environment that has once again become conflictual.

This evolution led to the emergence of a true American strategic state, characterized by the growing articulation between industrial policy, trade policy, technological policy and national security strategy. The instruments mobilized — massive subsidies, tax credits, export restrictions, investment controls, reshoring policies and targeted support for critical technologies — are part of the same movement of economic power. One last observation deserves to be underlined as it sheds light on the depth of the transformation underway. An analysis of the financial volumes mobilised by the federal authorities reveals a change of scale unprecedented in the recent history of US industrial policy. Between the beginning of the Clinton administration and the 2008 financial crisis, federal interventions directly or indirectly directed towards supporting technological and industrial capabilities can be estimated at a cumulative amount of around $500 billion to $1,000 billion, mainly concentrated in defense budgets, research programs, and diffuse innovation mechanisms. The period 2009-2020 marks a significant acceleration of this effort under the effect of the financial crisis, recovery policies and the first investments in the energy transition, but the whole remains fragmented and devoid of a real unifying doctrine. On the other hand, the period starting in 2021 constitutes a break of a completely different magnitude. The addition of commitments associated with the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, the Inflation Reduction Act and the multiple complementary federal programs leads to amounts that now exceed $1,000 to $1,500 billion in explicit industrial interventions. Even beyond these spectacular figures, it is their political significance that matters. For the first time in decades, the United States has embarked on a coherent strategy that simultaneously mobilizes industrial policy, technology policy, trade policy, and national security. The evolution observed therefore does not correspond to a simple budgetary increase; It reflects the emergence of a new regime of public action in which economic power has once again become a central object of American national strategy. One of the major lessons of this trajectory lies in the cumulative nature of these transformations. Contrary to a reading that would oppose a phase of liberal globalization to a recent phase of the return of public intervention, the analysis reveals a deeper continuity. Contemporary policies extend and radicalize intuitions formulated in the 1990s about the centrality of technological and industrial capacities in the power of nations. On the scale of two centuries of American history, the major event may not be the return of industrial policy, but the reappearance of an assumed Hamiltonian ambition, now adapted to the realities of globalization, the digital revolution and systemic competition between great powers.

This continuity invites a more general reading of the current recompositions of the world economy, particularly from a European point of view. It suggests that the boundary between economy and security, long considered clear in the classical paradigms of globalization, is now tending to blur in favor of a growing integration of productive issues into power strategies. From this perspective, the American case is not an exception, but a revealer. It highlights a broader transformation of the relationship between states, markets and technologies in a context of a lasting return to the logic of systemic rivalry.

It is precisely at this level that European thinking appears to be facing a major challenge today. Recent analyses of the European Union’s competitiveness – first and foremost the reference report on European competitiveness – show a salutary awareness of the continent’s structural fragilities in terms of industry, technology and energy. However, they are still largely part of an analytical temporality that tends to interpret American and Chinese developments as recent adjustments rather than as the culmination of long strategic trajectories.

However, the comparison with the United States shows that the current changes in direction are neither cyclical nor reactive in the strict sense. They are the result of a process of intellectual, institutional and political maturation that has been underway for several decades. On this point, the relative slowness with which the European Union integrates the economic security dimension into its industrial and technological policies is a major strategic issue. This raises a central question: can Europe still be satisfied with an essentially economic reading of competitiveness in a global environment where the great powers now explicitly articulate industry, technology and national security?

The answer to this question largely determines the ability of the European Union and its Member States to maintain their strategic autonomy in the coming decades. It presupposes a profound reassessment of existing instruments, but above all a coherence of industrial, trade, technological and security policies from a truly strategic perspective. In this sense, an ambitious and accelerated update of the work and reforms undertaken on European competitiveness, particularly in the wake of the Draghi report, seems essential. It would benefit from fully integrating the historical and structural dimension of the American and Chinese transformations, in order to go beyond a reading that is still too often reactive of current developments.

It is on this condition that Europe will be able to move from a logic of adaptation to a logic of autonomous strategic design, in line with the profound recompositions of the world economy and the new relationships between power, technology and sovereignty.

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Appendix 1

The Institutions of American Industrial Policy (Architecture and Functions, 1945–2025)

Institution	Nature	Role in industrial policy	Main instruments	Recent developments (2000–2025)	Analytical Commentary (Policy Function)
U.S. Presidency (Executive Office)	Central Executive Branch	Definition of the global industrial strategy and inter-agency arbitration	Executive Orders, National Security Strategy, Industrial Strategy	Rise to power under Trump I, Biden, Trump II (assumed industrial policy)	Becomes the centre of gravity of industrial policy: transition from a role of coordination to a role of direct strategic management of the economy
United States Congress	Legislative Branch	Vote on major industrial and budgetary programmes	Framework Acts (IRA, CHIPS Act), Federal Budgets, Tax Authorizations	Back in force since 2009 (stimulus, then  massive ARI)	Congress is once again becoming a co-producer of industrial policy, notably through taxation and tax credits
DARPA (Defense Advanced Networkand Projects Agency)	Federal Agency (DoW)	Financing of dual-use disruptive technologies	R&D programs, technology missions	Extension to AI, Cyber, Advanced Semiconductors	Emblematic Institution of the Innovative American State: Historical Matrix of Military and Civilian Innovation
CFIUS (Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States)	Interdepartmental Committee	Controlling inward foreign investment	FDI filtering, sensitive acquisition blocking	Major reinforcement via FIRRMA (2018)	Transforms foreign investment into  an object of broader national security
Department of Commerce (BIS – Bureau of Industry and Security)	Federal administration	Technology Export Control	Export controls, entity list, technology restrictions	Hyper activation against China (semiconductors)	Becomes a central instrument of technological economic warfare
Department of the Treasury (OFAC)	Federal administration	Economic and financial sanctions	Secondary sanctions, asset freezes	Extraterritorial extension of sanctions	Pillar of American financial power: the dollar’s systemic weapon
Department of Energy(DOE)	Sector Ministry	Energy transition and industrial innovation	Loan Programs Office, Energy, Nuclear, Battery Subsidies	Massive Expansion with IRA	Becomes an industrial banker for the energy transition
National Science Foundation (NSF)	Research Agency	Fundamental research funding	University grants, AI/quantum programs	Significantly increased budget (CHIPS Act)	Pillar of the innovation → industrialization chain
National Institutes of Health (NIH)	Biomedical Research Agency	Biotech and health leadership	Medical Research Funding	Post-COVID acceleration	Structure the American power in biotechnology and global health
Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR)	Business Administration	International Trade Policy	Negotiation of agreements, tariffs, Section 301	Anti-China pivot since 2017	Progressive Trade-National Security Merger
Federal Reserve System	Independent Central Bank	Monetary conditions for industrial investment	Key Rates, Liquidity, Quantitative Easing	Indirect role in reindustrialization	Indirect but crucial player: conditions the capacity for industrial investment
White House National Economic Council(NEC)	Executive coordinating body	Macroeconomic and industrial coordination	Interagency Arbitration	Role strengthened under Clinton and then Biden	« Internal strategic state »: interface between industrial policy and macroeconomics
Pentagon (Department of War)	Ministry of War (former Ministry of Defence)	Dual innovation and technological demand	Public procurement, defense R&D,  secure supply chain	Central feedback in semiconductors and AI	A true structuring technology investor in American capitalism

Appendix 2

The Strategic State and the Geoeconomic Shift: The Contemporary Instruments of American Industrial Policy (2009–2025)

Instrument	Mechanism	Period of intensification	Strategic purpose	Analytical Commentary (Structural Role)	Geoeconomic commentary (systemic reading)
Direct subsidies (IRA, CHIPS Act)	Massive budget financing targeted at critical sectors (energy, semiconductors, batteries)	2021–2025	Industrial relocation and technological leadership	Transition from a regulatory state to a state producing an industrial structure. The subsidy becomes a tool for building capacity, no longer for market correction.	An instrument for the « reconfiguration of global value chains »: the American state is becoming a player in the selection of global production sites and no longer a simple beneficiary of globalization.
Tax incentives (tax credits, production credits)	Tax reduction conditional on domestic production and investment	2010s–2025	Direction of private investment flows	The state acts indirectly through a fiscal price signal, creating decentralized planning. The market remains formally intact but strongly oriented.	A « visible steering » of globalisation: tax attractiveness is becoming an instrument of inter-state competition for industrial capacities.
Public Loans and Guarantees (DOE Loan Programs Office)	Long-term public credit for risky industrial projects	2009–2025 (post-IRA acceleration)	« De-risking » strategic investments	The State assumes the role of systemic insurer of industrial transitions, absorbing technological and financial risk.	Reintroduction of the logic of « security state capitalism »: private investment is made possible by the federal public financial power.
Strategic public procurement (defence, energy, green technologies)	Public procurement geared towards critical sectors	Continuous, strong expansion 2017–2025	Creation of industrial captive markets	The public market is becoming a tool for structuring industrial demand and no longer a simple purchasing mechanism.	The state artificially creates indirect global markets: the American public authorities become a « structuring buyer » of global technologies.
Public-Private Partnerships (Technology PPPs)	State-firm co-investment (Big Tech, defence, energy)	2000s–2025	Accelerating innovation and technology integration	Gradual fusion between the state apparatus and large technology firms in the production of strategic innovation.	Emergence of a « capitalism of co-production of power »: firms become quasi-state relays of technological projection.
Industrial and territorial conditionalities (local content rules)	Subsidies conditional on production on American soil	2022–2025	« Reshoring » (repatriation) of industrial activities	Introduction of a logic of productive sovereignty: access to public support depends on industrial location.	The return of a quasi-mercantilist logic in a globalized system: territoriality is once again becoming a central criterion of economic power.

Appendix 3

Contemporary instruments of US industrial policy (with budgetary orders of magnitude)

Instrument	Mechanism	Period	Purpose	Analytical Commentary	Geoeconomic commentary	Budgetary orders of magnitude
Direct subsidies (IRA, CHIPS Act)	Subsidies + industrial investment credits	2021–2025	Relocation + Tech Leadership	State producing industrial structure	Reshaping global value chains	ERI: ~$369 billion (energy/climate over 10 years);  CHIPS Act: ~$52.7 billion + ~$200 billion induced effects (private)
Tax Credits (IRAs)	Production/investment tax credits	2010s–2025	Investment Orientation	Indirect planning by taxation	Inter-State competition for investments	Estimated cost: $500 to $800 billion over 10 years (according to CBO and Brookings analyses)
Loans and guarantees (DOE Loan Programs Office)	Public loans for industrial projects	2009–2025	Industrial « de-risking »	Transition Insurer State	Security capitalism	Commitment capacity: $>400 billion authorized; ~$100–$150 billion active portfolio
Strategic public procurement	Defense / Energy / Tech Controls	Ongoing	Industrial demand creation	State as a structuring buyer	Global Market Structuring	US Defense: ~$850–900 billion/year (total budget DoW);  Growing technological share
Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs)	Innovation co-financing	2000s–2025	Innovation acceleration	State–Big Tech hybridization	Power co-production	Diffuse volumes: several tens of billions $/year (NSF + DOE + AI/energy programs)
Industrial conditionalities (local content)	Subsidies conditional on US production	2022–2025	Reshoring or reterritorialization	Productive sovereignty	Return of strategic mercantilism	Indirect cost included in IRA/CHIPS (~$400–$600 billion cumulative effects)

Sources: FIRRMA  texts (2018), U.S. Department of Commerce (Bureau of Industry and Security)  regulations, and Department  of the Treasury OFAC reports. Strategic analyses are based on Farrell & Newman (2019), Edward Fishman (Chokepoints, 2022) and Henry Farrell (Johns Hopkins SAIS). Economic data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) and estimates from the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE). The doctrinal dimension is completed by Blackwill & Harris (2016) and the work of the Atlantic Council on « economic security state« 

Appendix 4

Evolution of U.S. Industrial Policy Financial Volumes (1993–2025)

Administration	Period	Aggregate financial volume of industrial policy (order of magnitude)	Dominant instruments	Strategic Direction	Analytical reading (break / continuity)
Bill Clinton	1993–2001	~$10 to $30 billion / year (implicit, excluding defense)	NSF, NIH, DARPA, NEC, TECHNO INFRASTRUCTURE	Innovation, competitiveness, knowledge economy	Diffuse innovative state: unnamed but conceptualized industrial policy, integrated into research + defense
George W. Bush	2001–2009	~$20 to $50 billion / year (strongly defense + dual R&D)	Defense R&D, Homeland Security, NIH Strengthened	National Security + Dual Technology	Shift towards securing innovation, but without explicit industrial doctrine
Barack Obama	2009–2017	~$80 to $150 billion cumulated (ARRA + DOE + energy + innovation)	ARRA (stimulus), DOE Loan Programs, clean tech	Energy transition + post-crisis innovation	First inflection: discreet return of the industrial state via the financial crisis
Donald Trump (I) and (II)	2017–2021 and 2025 -ongoing	~$50 to $150 billion (incl. trade war + CHIPS initiated + defense)	China tariffs, CFIUS reinforced, export controls	Rivalry China + industrial sovereignty	Shift to conflictual geoeconomics, beginning of politicization of value chains
Joe Biden	2021–2025	~$1,000 to $1,500 billion (10 years combined IRA + CHIPS + IIJA + tax credits)	IRA (~369 billion), CHIPS (~280 billion), tax credits (~500–800 billion), DOE loans	Reindustrialization + climate + technological security	Major rupture: Assumed strategic state, massive indirect planning

Sources: Aggregate budget data are from the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) historical series and Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reports. The sectoral analyses are based on federal R&D budgets (NSF, NIH, DARPA, DOE) and statistics from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). Evaluations of recent programs (IRA, CHIPS Act) are based on CBO (2022–2025) and Brookings Institution. Finally, doctrinal interpretations mobilize Rodrik (2017), Atkinson (2012) and Mazzucato (2013) on the rise of the entrepreneurial and strategic state.

Appendix 5 

Aggregate estimate of industrial financing or incentives

Administration	Order of magnitude
Clinton (1993–2000)	$150 billion to $250 billion
Bush (2001–2008)	$300 to $500 billion
Obama (2009-2016)	$500 to $800 billion
Trump I (2017-2020)	$300 to $600 billion
Biden (2021-2025)	$1,200 to $1,500 billion
Trump II (2025-2029, mid-2026 projection)	$900 billion to $1,400 billion

Appendix 6

The main instruments of the Trump II administration’s industrial policy (2025-2026)

Strategic focus	Inspirations / doctrinal references	Instruments mobilized	Pilot institutions	Financial order of magnitude (2025-2026)	Comment
Manufacturing reindustrialization	Stephen Miran, Oren Cass, Robert Lighthizer	Sectoral tariffs, national preferences, relocations	White House, USTR,Commerce Department	$100 to $300 billion in induced private investment	The manufacturing industry is considered a strategic asset and no longer a simple economic variable.
Semiconductors	Continuity of the CHIPS Actbut a more nationalist reorientation	Chip tariffs, investment conditionalities, technological controls	Commerce Department, BIS	$50 to $80 billion mobilized or redeployed	Emphasis on the physical location of production capacities in the United States.
Critical minerals and rare earths	Doctrine of economic security; Critical Chain Autonomy Strategy	Defense Production Act, Federal Loans, Expedited Mining Permits	DOE, DoW, DFC, Interior Department	$50 billion to $100 billion	Dependence on China is explicitly qualified as strategic vulnerability.
Aggressive trade policy	Stephen Miran, Robert Lighthizer	Reciprocal Tariffs, Section 232, IEEPA	USTR, Treasury, White House	Economic effect on several hundred billion dollars of trade	Trade is becoming a lever for industrial restructuring and no longer just an instrument of trade policy.
Technological security	Legacy of Trump’s first term and bipartisan continuity	Export controls, technological restrictions, targeted sanctions	BIS, Commerce Department, CFIUS	Non-budgetary but major impact on technology flows	Increasing fusion between industrial policy and national security.
Energy policy and critical infrastructure	« America First  » doctrine applied to strategic resources	Support for energy infrastructure, nuclear, data centers, AI	DOE, DoW	Several tens of billions of dollars	Energy is thought of as a condition of industrial power.
External supply of critical resources	Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine	Mining diplomacy, bilateral agreements, securing supply chains	State Department, Commerce, DoW	Varies by project	Strong focus on lithium, copper, and rare earths from Latin America and the Arctic.

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^[1] Alexander Hamilton, Report on Manufactures, presented to the U.S. House of Representatives on December 5, 1791, Philadelphia, Childs and Swaine, 1791, 58 pp., esp. pp. 1-39; see also Harold C. Syrett (ed.), The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, vol. X, New York: Columbia University Press, 1966, pp. 230-340. On Hamilton’s place in the American industrial policy tradition, see Douglas A. Irwin, Clashing over Commerce. A History of US Trade Policy, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2017, 832 p., esp. pp. 69-96; Michael Lind, Land of Promise. An Economic History of the United States, New York, Harper, 2012, 592 p., spec. p. 45-72. 

^[2] Ibid.

^[3] Alexis de Tocqueville, De la démocratie en Amérique, Deuxième partie, Livre IV, chap. XX, Paris, Pagnerre, 1848, t. IV, p. 178. Re-ed. under the direction of Françoise Mélonio, Paris, Gallimard, coll. « Bibliothèque de la Pléiade », t. II, 1992, 1736 p., spec. p. 322-329 and p. 731-736. On Tocquevillian analyses of American industry and economics, see Pierre Manent, Tocqueville et la nature de la démocratie, Paris, Fayard, 1982, 181 p., spec. pp. 121-150; Lucien Jaume, Tocqueville. Les sources aristocratiques de la liberté, Paris, Fayard, 2008, 476 p., spec. p. 253-286.

^[4] Mariana Mazzucato, The Entrepreneurial State. Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths, London, Anthem Press, 2013, 266 p., spec. pp. 83-125; Fred Block and Matthew R. Keller (eds.), State of Innovation. The U.S. Government’s Role in Technology Development, Boulder, Colorado: Paradigm Publishers, 2011, 352 p., esp. pp. 1-32 and pp. 257-286; Linda Weiss, America Inc.? Innovation and Enterprise in the National Security State, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2014, 264 p., esp. pp. 1-41 and pp. 169-223.

^[5] Council on Competitiveness, Gaining New Ground. Technology Priorities for America’s Future, Washington D.C., Council on Competitiveness, 1991, 95 p., esp. pp. 1-18; Council on Competitiveness, Picking Up the Pace. The Commercial Challenge to American Innovation, Washington D.C., 1988, 68 p., spec. pp. 3-22; National Research Council, The Government Role in Civilian Technology. Building a New Alliance, Washington D.C., National Academy Press, 1992, 328 p., esp. pp. 1-27.

^[6] Robert B. Reich, The Work of Nations. Preparing Ourselves for 21st Century Capitalism, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1991, 331 p., esp. pp. 3-17 and pp. 171-184; Laura by Andrea Tyson, Who’s Bashing Whom? Trade Conflict in High-Technology Industries, Washington D.C., Institute for International Economics, 1992, 311 p., esp. pp. 1-25 and pp. 117-168; Lester C. Thurow, Head to Head. The Coming Economic Battle among Japan, Europe and America, New York, William Morrow and Company, 1992, 336 p., esp. pp. 25-59 and pp. 273-311; Stephen S. Cohen and John Zysman, Manufacturing Matters. The Myth of the Post-Industrial Economy, New York, Basic Books, 1987, 297 p., spec. pp. 3-30 and pp. 245-270. To this group of academics who are rather democratic, we should add Michael E. Porter, The Competitive Advantage of Nations, New York, Free Press, 1990, 855 p., spec. pp. 71-130; Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize in Economics, « Competitiveness: A Dangerous Obsession », Foreign Affairs, vol. 73, no. 2, March-April 1994, pp. 28-44; Clyde V. Prestowitz Jr., Trading Places. How We Allowed Japan to Take the Lead, New York, Basic Books, 1988, 394 p., esp. pp. 1-38 and pp. 285-337.

^[7] François Souty, « Les fondements théoriques de la politique économique du président Clinton », Chroniques de la SEDEIS, vol. 42, No. 9, Paris, S.E.D.E.I.S., September 1993, pp. 371-380; François Souty, « Politique de la concurrence de l’administration Clinton », Chroniques économiques de la SEDEIS, vol. 43, n° 3, Paris, S.E.D.E.I.S., March 1994, pp. 89-98; François Souty, « La politique aéronautique de l’administration Clinton », Chroniques économiques de la SEDEIS, vol. 43, n° 6, Paris, S.E.D.E.I.S., June 1994, p. 207-214; François Souty, La politique de la concurrence des États-Unis, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, coll. « Que sais-je? », March 1995, 128 p.; François Souty, « Mondialisation économique et politique de la concurrence », Chroniques économiques de la SEDEIS, vol. 44, n° 10, Paris, S.E.D.E.I.S., October 1995, p. 387-395. To complete this reflection on the evolution of contemporary forms of economic power, see also F. Souty, « Chinese competition law: from the 2007 anti-monopoly law to the strategic regulation of an integrated market economy (2008-2025) », Le Diplomate Média, 29 April 2026, 40 p., spec. p. 1-40.

^[8] F. Souty, « Les fondements théoriques de la politique économique du président Clinton », Chroniques de la SEDEIS, vol. 42, No. 9, September 1993, pp. 371-380; F. Souty, La politique de la concurrence des États-Unis, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, coll. « Que sais-je? », March 1995, 128 p., esp. pp. 55-78.

^[9] Robert B. Reich, op.cit., pp. 3-17 ; Laura D’Andrea Tyson, op.cit., p. 117-168; Lester C. Thurow, op.cit., pp. 25-59.

^[10] R. Reich et al. Op.cit. See note 9.

^[11] See F. Souty, op.cit., note 8.

^[12] Ezra Vogel, Japan as Number One. Lessons for America, Cambridge (Mass.), Harvard Univ. Press, 1979, 272 p.; Clyde V. Prestowitz Jr., Trading Places. How We Allowed Japan to Take the Lead, New York, Basic Books, 1988, 336 p., pp. 1-40.

^[13] Chalmers Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle. The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925-1975, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1982, 393 p., esp. pp. 17-34 and pp. 305-324.

^[14] Michael E. Porter, op. cit., spec. pp. 71-130 and pp. 545-582.

^[15] Paul Krugman, « Competitiveness: A Dangerous Obsession, » Foreign Affairs, Vol. 73, No. 2, March-April 1994, pp. 28-44.

^[16] Council on Competitiveness, Gaining New Ground. Technology Priorities for America’s Future, Washington D.C., Council on Competitiveness, 1991, 95 p., esp. pp. 1-18 and pp. 59-76.

^[17] Michael E. Porter, op.cit. pp. 71-130, 344-378 and 545-582.

^[18] Paul Krugman, « Competitiveness: A Dangerous Obsession, » Foreign Affairs, Vol. 73, No. 2, March-April 1994, pp. 28-44, esp. pp. 30-36.

^[19] Council on Competitiveness, op.cit; Council on Competitiveness, Endless Frontier, Limited Resources. U.S. R&D Policy for Competitiveness, Washington D.C., 1996, 84 p., esp. pp. 5-27.

^[20] Robert B. Reich, op.cit, not. pp. 3-17, pp. 109-140 and pp. 171-184.

^[21] Robert B. Reich, The Work of Nations, op.cit., esp. pp. 3-17, pp. 109-140 and pp. 171-184.

^[22] Laura D’Andrea Tyson, op.cit., spec. pp. 1-25, pp. 117-168 and pp. 227-281; Laura by Andrea Tyson, Who’s Bashing Whom? This work was published in a second edition in 1993.

^[23] Lester C. Thurow, Head to Head, op.cit.,  esp. pp. 25-59, pp. 147-197 and pp. 273-311.

^[24] François Souty, « The Theoretical Foundations of President Clinton’s Economic Policy », Chroniques de la SEDEIS, vol. 42, No. 9, Paris, S.E.D.E.I.S., September 1993, pp. 371-380; Ira C. Magaziner and Robert B. Reich, Minding America’s Business. The Decline and Rise of the American Economy, New York, Vintage Books, 1983, 423 p., spec. pp. 313-382

^[25] François Souty, « The Theoretical Foundations of President Clinton’s Economic Policy », op.cit., pp. 371-380 ; Laura D’Andrea Tyson, Who’s Bashing Whom? op cit, and Robert B. Reich, op.cit. 

^[26] François Souty, « La politique aéronautique de l’administration Clinton », Chroniques économiques de la SEDEIS, vol. 43, n° 6, Paris, S.E.D.E.I.S., June 1994, p. 207-214; Stephen S. Cohen and John Zysman, Manufacturing Matters (New York: Basic Books, 1987).

^[27] Kenneth Lieberthal and Michael E. Oksenberg, Policy Making in China: Leaders, Structures, and Processes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), pp. 3-25 and 201-230; Barry Naughton, The Chinese Economy: Transitions and Growth, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 2007, pp. 45-78

^[28] See our recent articles: François Souty, « Chinese competition law: from the 2007 antimonopoly law to the strategic regulation of an integrated market economy (2008-2025) », Le Diplomate Média, 29 04 2026, 37 p. and F. Souty, « Industrial policy and competition policy in China since 2001: a strategic convergence at the antipodes of the European model? », Le Diplomate Média, 03 06 2026, 40 p. 

^[29] Joseph E. Stiglitz, Globalization and Its Discontents, New York: W.W. Norton, 2002, pp. 3-30.

^[30] Gary Gereffi and Miguel Korzeniewicz (eds.), Commodity Chains and Global Capitalism, Westport, Praeger, 1994, pp. 1-20 and 221-245.

^[31] Dani Rodrik, Has Globalization Gone Too Far?, Washington D.C., Institute for International Economics, 1997, pp. 1-34.

^[32] The White House, The National Strategy for Homeland Security (Washington, D.C., Office of Homeland Security, July 2002), pp. 1-15 and 33-60.

^[33] Ibid.

^[34] Richard A. Clarke, Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror (New York: Free Press, 2004), pp. 85-132.

^[35] Stephen E. Flynn, America the Vulnerable: How Our Government Is Failing to Protect Us from Terrorism (New York: Harper-Collins, 2004), pp. 21-58 and 133-176

^[36] Henry Farrell and Abraham L. Newman, « Weaponized Interdependence: How Global Economic Networks Shape State Coercion, » International Security, Vol. 44, No. 1, 2019, pp. 42–79.

^[37] Ben S. Bernanke, The Courage to Act: A Memoir of a Crisis and Its Aftermath (New York: W.W. Norton, 2015), pp. 95-142; Adam Tooze, Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World, London, Allen Lane, 2018, pp. 1-40 and 161-210.

^[38] Gary Gorton, Slapped by the Invisible Hand: The Panic of 2007 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 45-88; Adam Tooze, op. cit. cit., pp. 90-135.

^[39] U.S. Department of the Treasury, Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) Report to Congress, Washington D.C., 2009, pp. 1-25; Federal Reserve System, Financial Crisis Responses and Monetary Policy Expansion 2008–2012, Washington D.C., successive reports.

^[40] Joseph E. Stiglitz, Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy (New York: W.W. Norton, 2010), pp. 3-38; Dani Rodrik, The Globalization Paradox (New York: W.W. Norton, 2011), pp. 1-45.

^[41] Christina D. Romer, « The Job Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan, » Washington, D.C., Council of Economic Advisers, January 2009, 15 p.; Alan S. Blinder and Mark Zandi, How the Great Recession Was Brought to an End (Princeton: Moody’s Analytics and Princeton University, 2010), pp. 1–24.

^[42] Barack Obama, A Strategy for American Innovation. Driving Towards Sustainable Growth and Quality Jobs, Washington D.C., Executive Office of the President, September 2009, 44 p., esp. pp. 1-15; Carl J. Schramm, The Entrepreneurial Imperative (New York: Harper Business, 2011), spec. pp. 91-128.

^[43] Steven Rattner, Overhaul. An Insider’s Account of the Obama Administration’s Emergency Rescue of the Auto Industry, Boston, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010, 354 p., spec. pp. 1-62 and pp. 265-314

^[44] François Souty, « What Competition Policy for the Obama Administration? » Concurrences N° 1-2009, pp. 74-79

^[45] Joseph E. Stiglitz, Freefall. America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy, New York, W.W. Norton, 2010, 361 p., spec. pp. 3-38 and pp. 221-273.

^[46] Executive Office of the President, A Strategy for American Innovation, op. cit., pp. 21-37; Advanced Manufacturing Partnership Steering Committee, Capturing Domestic Competitive Advantage in Advanced Manufacturing, Washington D.C., July 2012, 74 p.

^[47] Barry Naughton, op. cit., spec. pp. 431-504 ; Peter Navarro, Death by China, Upper Saddle River, Pearson FT Press, 2011, pp. 1-57.

^[48] François Souty, op.cit. N° 1-2009, pp. 74-79.

^[49] Susan Helper, Timothy Krueger and Howard Wial, Why Does Manufacturing Matter? Which Manufacturing Matters?, Washington D.C., Brookings Institution, February 2012, 22 p., spec. pp. 1-15.

^[50] President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), Ensuring American Leadership in Advanced Manufacturing, Washington D.C., June 2011, 108 p., esp. pp. 1-34; National Research Council, Making Value for America. Embracing the Future of Manufacturing, Technology and Work, Washington D.C., National Academies Press, 2012, 352 p

^[51] International Energy Agency, Energy Technology Perspectives 2012, Paris, OECD/IEA, 2012, spec. p. 45-96; Ernest J. Moniz and Daniel Poneman, The Climate Challenge and the Future of Energy Technology (Cambridge, Mass.): MIT Press, 2015, pp. 101-176.

^[52] Ashton B. Carter and William J. Perry, Preventive Defense. A New Security Strategy for America, Washington D.C., Brookings Institution Press, reed. 2017, esp. pp. 289-331; Linda Weiss, America Inc.? Innovation and Enterprise in the National Security State, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2014, esp. pp. 169-223.

^[53] Chalmers Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925–1975 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1982), pp. 3–45; Robert Wade, Governing the Market: Economic Theory and the Role of Government in East Asian Industrialization (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), pp. 28-75.

^[54] Sebastian Heilmann, Red Swan: How Unorthodox Policy-Making Facilitated China’s Rise, Hong Kong, The Chinese University Press, 2018, pp. 55-102; Barry Naughton, The Chinese Economy: Transitions and Growth, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 2007, pp. 410-455; Angela Huyue Zhang, High Wire: How China Regulates Big Tech and Governs Its Economy, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2024, pp. 15-60.

^[55] Henry Farrell and Abraham L. Newman, op.cit., pp. 42-79.

^[56] Harry First, « Antitrust in a Global Context, » New York University Law Review, vol. 84, 2009, pp. 205-260; Harry First & Spencer Weber Waller, Antitrust Law in Global Competition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 1-40.

^[57] François Souty, Chinese Competition Law: From the 2007 Anti-Monopoly Law to the Strategic Regulation of an Integrated Market Economy (2008-2025), Le Diplomate Média, 29 April 2026, 40 p.

^[58] Clyde V. Prestowitz, The Betrayal of American Prosperity (New York: Free Press, 2010), pp. 1-45; Robert D. Atkinson, Innovation Economics: The Race for Global Advantage, New Haven, Yale University Press, 2012, pp. 3-38.

^[59] Dani Rodrik, Has Globalization Gone Too Far?, Washington D.C., Institute for International Economics, 1997, pp. 35-72; Paul Krugman, Pop Internationalism, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1996, pp. 85-120.

^[60] Chris Miller, Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology (New York: Scribner, 2022), pp. 1-55.

^[61] Jennifer Hillman, Trading Places: How We Allowed China to Take the Lead in Global Trade, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020, pp. 60-110; Edward Alden, Failure to Adjust: How Americans Got Left Behind in the Global Economy (Washington D.C.: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 2016), pp. 90-140.

^[62] Henry Farrell & Abraham L. Newman, op.cit., pp. 42-79.

^[63] Dani Rodrik, Straight Talk on Trade: Ideas for a Sane World Economy, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2017, pp. 211-245; Adam S. Posen, « The End of Globalization? What Russia’s War in Ukraine Means for the World Economy », Foreign Affairs, vol. 101, no. 3, 2022, pp. 28-39; Jake Sullivan, « Remarks on Renewing American Economic Leadership, » Brookings Institution, Washington D.C., 2023 (speech).

^[64] White House, Building Resilient Supply Chains, Revitalizing American Manufacturing, and Fostering Broad-Based Growth, Washington D.C., June 2021, pp. 1-40; U.S. Department of Commerce, CHIPS and Science Act Implementation Strategy, Washington D.C., 2022, pp. 5-38.

^[65] Henry Farrell & Abraham L. Newman, op.cit., pp. 42-79. Also Kathleen McNamara, « The Politics of Everyday Europe and America’s Return to Industrial Policy, » Review of International Political Economy, Vol. 30, No. 2, 2023, pp. 450-478.

^[66]  Henry Farrell & Abraham L. Newman, op. cit..

^[67] Kathleen McNamara, « The Politics of Industrial Policy in an Era of Geoeconomics, » Review of International Political Economy, Vol. 30, No. 2, 2023, pp. 450-478.

^[68] Chris Miller, Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology (New York: Scribner, 2022), pp. 1-55.

^[69] Robert D. Blackwill & Jennifer M. Harris, War by Other Means: Geoeconomics and Statecraft, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2016, pp. 1-40. 

^[70] Hal Brands, American Grand Strategy in the Age of Trump, Washington D.C., Brookings Institution Press, 2018, pp. 45-90; Time Magazine, « The 200-Year-Old Foreign Policy Vision Behind Trump’s Monroe Doctrine Revival, » 2026.

^[71] The Hill, « Trump’s revival of the Monroe Doctrine reshapes US strategy in the Western Hemisphere », Washington D.C., 2025, political analysis (online edition).

^[72] David Lubin, « The Economics of the New Monroe Doctrine », Chatham House – International Affairs Commentary, 2025, pp. 1-6.

^[73] Stephen Miran, « Remarks at the Hudson Institute on U.S. Economic Strategy and Global Imbalances, » Washington D.C., Hudson Institute, April 7, 2025. Major speech by the President of the Council of Economic Advisors to the President of the United States, exposing with perfect clarity the strategic reasoning of the Trump II administration. 

^[74] François Souty, « The Turnberry Agreement and the Recomposition of Transatlantic Trade Relations », Le Diplomate Média, Paris, 2025, p. 1-14.

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