An Obama Aide Makes the Case for a Manufacturing Bias

Ideas matter in Washington, if only as the sharp points on the battering rams of power and money. One of the ideas of 2012 is the need for some sort of industrial policy. President Barack Obama called for more robust support of manufacturing in his State of the Union address and his “An America Built to Last” blueprint, which followed shortly afterward.

The debate over industrial policy has heated up since then, with criticism of Obama’s proposals coming from expected and unexpected quarters. Writing about the president’s effort in the Wall Street Journal, Michael Boskin, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President George H.W. Bush, reminded readers of Obama’s “record of picking losers” such as Solyndra, the now-bankrupt solar panel manufacturer. More stinging was a shot by one of Obama’s own—Christina Romer, who headed the CEA until 2010. In a February op-ed in the New York Times titled “Do Manufacturers Need Special Treatment?” she wrote, “A successful argument for a government manufacturing policy has to go beyond the feeling that it’s better to produce ‘real things’ than services.”