Industriepolitik in den Vereinigten Staaten

Industrial Policy is not a new political phenomenon under the Clinton Administration. But president Clinton’s predecessors always denied this. Alexander Hamilton’s suggestions of state intervention for the developing American industry in his „Report on Manufactures“ (1791), can be seen as a forerunner of an industrial policy. When the U.S. industry had to face serious competition problems in the 1970ies, the discussion on state intervention arose again. Political groups suggested that the U.S. needed a conceptional industrial policy, pointing to its success in Europe and Japan.
This study demonstrates that opponents of an industrial policy in the U.S. are right in their argumentation that the success of industrial policy is exaggerated. A review of U.S. trade-policy and defense-policy proofes that industrial policy continues to be practised in the United States too. This is not a conceptional industrial policy, though an ad-hoc policy. The author contends that the state should concentrate on setting an institutional framework and that no industrial policy is the best economic option, not only for the U.S.