CommentaryInsightsPerspectivesExplainers
Topic
Industrial Policy
40 pieces
Pieces
- ExplainerIndustrial Policy
Manufacturing employment and manufacturing output measure different things
A country can make more while employing fewer people, and the federal series that track it will say so. This explains what each one counts and when each one is the right measure to cite.
- PerspectivesIndustrial Policy
What an allocator actually learns from four flat years of industrial output
Industrial production has spent five straight readings within 1.2 points of its 2017 base. That flat line is not evidence that nothing is being built. It is evidence that the aggregate cannot answer the question capital is asking.
- ExplainerIndustrial Policy
What a production subsidy actually buys
Governments underwrite factories in two different ways: by paying toward the building, or by paying for each unit the finished plant makes. By the end you will know which instrument a programme is using, and what each one can and cannot change.
- ExplainerIndustrial Policy
What upstream and downstream mean in an energy supply chain
The words split an industry into three stages with different economics, different regulators and different failure modes. By the end you will know where each boundary falls and why the stage a policy attaches to decides who pays for it.
- CommentaryIndustrial Policy
The bigger GDP number answers a different question
The United States publishes two gross domestic product totals and they are diverging by design. Industrial programmes are almost always defended with the larger one, which is the only one that cannot tell you whether more is being made.
- InsightsIndustrial Policy
Manufacturing output has been below its 2017 level in every year since 2020
The manufacturing index read 93 on a 2017 base of 100 in 2020 and 97.3 in 2025, with a high of 98 in 2022. Total industrial production, on the same base and from the same board, crossed 100 in 2022 and has stayed above it, and the distance between the two lines has widened at every step since 2021.
- ExplainerIndustrial Policy
How construction spending counts work that has actually been done
Announcements, permits and starts all measure intent. Value put in place measures work installed on site. This explains what the difference is worth when a building programme is being judged.
- InsightsIndustrial Policy
Half the capacity use gained after 2020 has since been given back
Manufacturing capacity utilisation rose 4.7 points between 2020 and 2022, and 4.4 of them arrived in the first year. It has given back 2.3 points in the three years since.
- CommentaryIndustrial Policy
One industrial line is climbing and the index around it is not
Domestic semiconductor production reached 165 on a 2017 base in 2025, from 121 in 2021. Total industrial production reached 101.2. That gap is the best evidence economic-security policy has in this data, which is exactly why it should be claimed carefully.
- CommentaryTrade & Investment
A tariff is borne at home, and the published data closes two of the three answers that say otherwise
Goods imports from China fell from a monthly average of 45 billion dollars in 2022 to 26 in 2025, while imports of goods and services rose from 3.97 trillion to 4.25, so the buying moved rather than came home. No series on this site measures a duty collected or an import price, so whether the exporter cut his own price cannot be tested here at all.
- InsightsInfrastructure
Nonresidential construction spending rose 14 billion in 2025 after 450 in three years
The annual rate stands at 1,309 billion dollars, the highest of six readings, and the step that brought it there is the smallest rise in the series. Spending on manufacturing plant fell 29 billion in the same year, so a total that barely moved sits on top of a 43-billion rise in everything else.
- InsightsIndustrial Policy
Electronics output rose more in 2025 than in the three years before it combined
The computer and electronic product index added 8.5 points in 2025, against 8 points exactly across the three preceding years together, on a base where 2017 is 100. A narrower semiconductor index published on the same base added 21 points in that same year, and the file does not say how much of the broader move belongs to it.
- CommentaryEconomic Security
Before the next plant, explain the idle line
American manufacturing used 75.3 percent of its capacity in 2025, against 77.6 percent in 2022. A programme that pays to add capacity without accounting for the capacity already standing is not an industrial policy. It is a construction policy.
- ExplainerIndustrial Policy
What "manufacturing as a share of GDP" actually measures
The share has fallen every year since 2022. That is not the same as making less, and the difference is where most arguments about industrial policy go wrong.
- PerspectivesIndustrial Policy
What transfers between places is the method, not the programme
Spending on manufacturing plant rose from 75 billion dollars a year to 244 and then fell to 215, and no file held here says where a dollar of it landed. The structures that decide whether such spending works are published state by state, but nothing here records a single award, decision or outcome.
- ExplainerIndustrial Policy
What a domestic content rule actually requires
A Buy American clause is an origin test written into a contract, not a ban on foreign goods. By the end you will know how the test is computed, who has to prove it, and what a waiver reveals.
- CommentaryIndustrial Policy
Industrial policy is being judged by the wrong labour number
The unemployment rate says how many job-seekers found work. It says nothing about how many people are looking. For a programme meant to draw people back into work, that is the only question that matters.
- InsightsIndustrial Policy
Factory construction spending fell in 2025 after four straight years of increase
The monthly average rose from 75 billion dollars in 2020 to 244 billion in 2024, then fell to 215 billion in 2025, the only fall in six readings. Nonresidential construction spending, from the same agency and on the same basis, rose in that same year.
- InsightsEconomic Security
The industrial index has spent six years going almost nowhere
Industrial production ended 2025 at 101.2 on a 2017 base of 100. It has moved 1.9 points in four years, and the 2025 reading sits 0.2 above 2022.
- ExplainerTrade & Investment
What an export credit agency does for a sale abroad
An export credit agency is a public body that takes on the risk a commercial bank will not, so that a domestic exporter can sell to a foreign buyer on credit. By the end you should be able to follow the transaction and see where the public exposure actually sits.
