If former U.S. President Donald Trump had not been so incapable of governing, and felt so threatened by his own civil servants, his administration might have done what his successor, President Joe Biden, did last week: Create a blueprint for an “America first” economic policy that consigns decades of liberal internationalism to the ash heap of history.
With a 250-page White House report on “supply chain resilience,” and the U.S. Senate’s approval of a $250-billion bill to compete with a rising China, the administration is trying to launch the United States on a new path toward rebuilding economic self-sufficiency, jump-starting innovation, and spreading economic benefits more broadly among Americans. Trump promised in his first speech as president to “remove the rust from the rust belt and usher in a new industrial revolution,” and then accomplished nothing of the sort. Biden may usher in that revolution.
