{"id":162358,"date":"2025-07-23T17:10:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-24T01:10:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=162358"},"modified":"2025-07-23T17:16:30","modified_gmt":"2025-07-24T01:16:30","slug":"industrial-policy-for-the-united-states-winning-the-competition-for-good-jobs-and-high-value-industries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=162358","title":{"rendered":"Industrial Policy for the United States: Winning the Competition for Good Jobs and High-Value Industries"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/SiTHqm6EMI4?si=rtc3P3gMt5J-5ULc\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><A HREF=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Industrial-Policy-United-States-Competition\/dp\/1009243071\">I love this new book<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>1. \u201cIndustrial Policy\u201d is my new pickup line.<br \/>\nI go to synagogue and tell the ladies: \u201cI believe in protecting American industry. Want to vertically integrate over kugel?\u201d It\u2019s not working yet, but I think my policy just needs more tariffs.<\/p>\n<p>2. America outsourced its manufacturing&#8230; like I outsourced my dignity.<br \/>\nIn the &#8217;80s we lost steel jobs to Japan. In the &#8217;90s we lost microchips to Taiwan. In the 2000s, I lost my girlfriend to a guy with a working HVAC. It\u2019s all part of the same decline!<\/p>\n<p>3. I believe in economic nationalism\u2014because nobody\u2019s gonna offshore me.<br \/>\nExcept emotionally. Every girl I\u2019ve dated has emotionally offshored me to some finance bro in Tel Aviv or a Burning Man DJ in Silver Lake.<\/p>\n<p>4. Marc Fasteau says we need to pick winning industries. I say: pick me, dammit!<br \/>\nI&#8217;m high value. I&#8217;m a legacy industry. I\u2019ve been operating at a loss since 1997, but that\u2019s just because I\u2019m undercapitalized!<\/p>\n<p>5. America doesn\u2019t have an industrial policy. You know what I have instead? Vibes.<br \/>\nMy vibe is: \u201cemotionally unavailable but economically protectionist.\u201d I&#8217;m trying to protect domestic production of serotonin. It\u2019s not going well.<\/p>\n<p>6. They talk about a national industrial strategy. I can\u2019t even get a personal strategy.<br \/>\nTheir goal is full employment. My goal is any employment. I once put down \u201cthought leader\u201d on a job application and they replied, \u201cThat\u2019s cute.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>7. Industrial decline is real. I\u2019ve lived it.<br \/>\nOnce I had a big vision, a great haircut, and a 2004 Volvo with 160k miles. Now I\u2019ve got back pain and a blog no one reads. My last job was being ghosted by girls who quote Walter Russell Mead.<\/p>\n<p>8. Economic security is sexy.<br \/>\nYou want to get girls back into traditional values? Give &#8217;em a guy with a defined-benefit pension and a mortgage he didn\u2019t inherit from his bubbe. That\u2019s the real hero\u2019s journey.<\/p>\n<p>9. I told my rabbi I\u2019m committed to reindustrializing America. He said, \u201cCan you start by reindustrializing your life?\u201d<br \/>\nApparently wearing the same pants three days in a row isn\u2019t a form of economic protest. Who knew?<\/p>\n<p>10. These guys want \u201chigh-value industries.\u201d Bro, I want to be a high-value industry.<br \/>\nI\u2019ve got comparative advantage in Talmudic guilt, anti-woke rants, and making women uncomfortable by quoting Carl Schmitt on first dates. Why won\u2019t Helen Andrews profile me?<\/p>\n<p>11. They talk about \u201creshoring jobs.\u201d I\u2019m trying to reshore dignity.<br \/>\nI used to think I was just down on my luck. Now I realize I\u2019m an abandoned textile mill in the Rust Belt\u2014gutted, haunted, and full of pigeons.<\/p>\n<p>12. The book says we need to invest in public goods. I am a public good!<br \/>\nI\u2019m the kind of guy who\u2019ll watch your kids, quote Tocqueville, and defend Western Civilization before breakfast. But can I get a date? No. All the girls want crypto bros or trauma doulas.<\/p>\n<p>13. America\u2019s got brain drain. I\u2019ve got soul drain.<br \/>\nAll my friends went to work in AI or defense contracting. I went into reading Leo Strauss in parking lots and asking if it\u2019s too late for a heroic aristocracy.<\/p>\n<p>14. \u201cWe need industrial champions,\u201d says the book. I yell, \u201cI volunteer as tribute!\u201d<br \/>\nI\u2019ll be the national champion for celibate traditionalism, moral panic, and economic revanchism. I just need a woman to overlook my vibes and my Google history.<\/p>\n<p>15. The authors call for a new economic order. I\u2019ve been ordering the same economy special for 20 years: Sad Boy with Side of Righteous Fury.<br \/>\nNobody wants it. Not even Uber Eats. I tried rebranding as a \u201csovereigntist,\u201d but Bumble said I looked too angry in my profile pic.<\/p>\n<p>16. America has no strategy, no vision, no will to win. Just like me at speed dating.<br \/>\nSome guy with an Etsy brand of \u201cartisanal solvents\u201d is getting action while I\u2019m ranting about the Chicago School and currency manipulation. No justice.<\/p>\n<p>17. We\u2019ve got too many MBA consultants and not enough machinists.<br \/>\nSame in dating: too many \u201cpolyamorous UX researchers\u201d and not enough women who get turned on by trade policy and moral clarity. I want a partner in industrial nationalism, not another yoga witch who ghosted me after reading Righteous Victims.<\/p>\n<p>18. America has abandoned the working class. So have most of my exes.<br \/>\nI\u2019m the guy they date before they get serious about buying property. One called me a \u201clife detour.\u201d I said, \u201cNo, I\u2019m a Jeffersonian interlude!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I love this new book. 1. \u201cIndustrial Policy\u201d is my new pickup line. I go to synagogue and tell the ladies: \u201cI believe in protecting American industry. Want to vertically integrate over kugel?\u201d It\u2019s not working yet, but I think &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=162358\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21791],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-162358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-america"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=162358"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":162362,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162358\/revisions\/162362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=162358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=162358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=162358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}