NO BAD IDEA EVER GOES AWAY.

So it is with "industrial policy."

The last time national industrial policy – where the government picks winners and losers in the market – was in vogue was the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Japan’s fast-growing economy was all the rage – with nearly a dozen bestselling books marveling over the “rising sun.” Campy economists like MIT’s Lester Thurow (aka “less than thorough”) lectured us that America had to be more like them, toss out our antiquated devotion to free markets, and allow politicians to choose what companies and strategic industries to invest in.

Of late, Japan has become a country of old people and disaffected young people, and they're no longer getting rich.  (Via Cafe Hayek.  There's more good stuff in today's links.)

Image retrieved from Unleash Prosperity.

Unfortunately for the public, each election becomes an opportunity for a different set of grifters to claim they have earned their spurs, and they should don boots and saddle their constituents with more burdens.

But now we have Republicans supporting a handout of $10 billion to Intel, and Democrats still pouring tens of billions more into green energy flops like Solyndra as if they were genius stock pickers, like Warren Buffett. Even more dangerous is the rise of big government Republicanism, sometimes called National Conservatism, which espouses industrial policy.

Here we go again!

It's always the same category error.  If it isn't Japan envy, it's China envy.  A few years ago it was the Jarrett regency.  "[I]ndustrial policy is a way of generating rents and creating a swamp that has to be drained. I thought we had enough of Government Czars forty years ago, but Donald Boudreaux notes no bad idea ever goes away."  This time around it's Donald Trump playing text-a-tariff.  Mostly that's choking off shipments of European model train components to the States and other minor inconveniences.