The US Government Is Now a Shareholder in 26 Companies

Repeating outdated tropes ad nauseum is dumb.

There is bipartisan support for industrial policy.

2008 shaped our thinking on this and most of our policymakers in the 19th century were influence by Alexander Hamilton and Fredrich List.

Our allies (Japan, South Korea) as well as our competitors (China) use this as well, and so did the US until the 1990s.

I support the CHIPS Act and IRA. I also support building an American SWF as well as operationalizing state-managed SWFs and pension funds into SDFs as well. And so do most decisionmakers who were in the Obama and Biden admins as well as the Trump admin.

Edit: can't reply

> so I'm not sure we should shape all of our policy

What I mean is pre-2008 it was heterodox to assume that government capital could be deployed to build or rebuild industries.

The default assumption was industrial policy only succeeded once (Japan).

The mixture of public-private subsidizes at the state level to develop GreenTech clusters in TX and CA, Semiconductor clusters in AZ, NatGas and Oil production in the Dakotas, and other such "booms" in the 2010s compared to Germany's hard stance on austerity leading to deindustrialization and China catching up to Germany in a number of core industrial technologies influenced the newish generation of policymakers.

> For this specific industrial policy

Yes [0][1][2][3].

[0] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-09-06/biden-aid...

[1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/10/us/politics/us-sovereign-...

[2] - https://www.yalejournal.org/publications/wealth-and-diplomac...

[3] - https://irs.princeton.edu/industrial-policy-united-states

What capital gains? The governments balance sheet doesn't matter...

Think of it like the original Bitcoin wallet, its value is $0 because none of those will ever be sold.

If dividends are involved it could matter but the government basically gets 20% of dividends already and extra 4% doesn't make a huge difference.

Returning to blocking stock buybacks as price manipulation and forcing businesses to give out dividends again would actually impact revenue in a meaningful way in contrast.

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I’m not sure if I’m supposed to be against this but it seems like if the percentage is limited and they’re non voting shares then it should be ok.

I guess preferential treatment could be the only issue?

The investments listed here in the article make this seem like an effort to shore up or incentivize industries or companies that are integral to national defense. One example, in the ongoing US-China trade war one of the strongest moves China did was put [export controls on rare earth minerals][1] which are essential components across technology, defense, and healthcare to name a few. The government investing in these companies isn't ideal from a free enterprise perspective but seems rational from a national security perspective.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_earths_trade_dispute