Comment by verdverm
4 hours ago
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.
What about after accounting for PPP? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power_parity)
Do the US numbers account for state level incentives like tax breaks?
I for one do not trust Google summaries, having seen too many hallucinations, it has pushed me away from their search and ai completely.
Here are some links I found (among many). I tend to trust CSIS, even though the have many hawks, they are generally thorough and nuanced.
https://www.csis.org/analysis/red-ink-estimating-chinese-ind...
Some historical analyses of US policies (know less, but both put it over 1% currently, nuances)
https://www.columbia.edu/~ev2124/research/ErtenStiglitzVerho...
https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w34744/w347...
I'm honestly not sure why this is seen so negatively. It seems to be working pretty well for them, perhaps we should do similar instead of whining about others being more effective?