Comment by nxm
5 hours ago
That doesn’t explain the decline of German automotive industry which is now taken over by Chinese cars thanks to massive subsidies by the Chinese government
5 hours ago
That doesn’t explain the decline of German automotive industry which is now taken over by Chinese cars thanks to massive subsidies by the Chinese government
Why? Germany is also run by lawyers.
See eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Merz#Private_sector_... for the current chancellor. Many past chancellors were also lawyers, and many members of the Bundestag were and are lawyers.
I don't know whether having lawyers in power leads to industrial decline. My point is only that you can't use Germany as a counterexample.
Do we consider the US Chips Act to be a subsidy? What about when GM became Government Motors because it was Too Big To Fail?
In other words, when do economic and industrial policies transition to subsidies? Is it a matter of perspective? Is the devil in the details?
It's a matter of scale: https://www.wsj.com/world/china/the-u-s-has-been-spending-bi...
If you trust Google's AI summary, China spends 4-5% of GDP on industrial subsidies, vs US at 0.4%. 10-12x as much.