How best to bring back manufacturing

were a small but telling split in the cold war. The Soviet Union had such a focus on industry that its statisticians kept services from the country’s measure of national income. A year after the conflict ended, Michael Boskin, then the White House’s chief economist, is said to have joked it did not matter whether the “chips” America produced were made from semiconductors or potatoes. There are echoes in the present geopolitical face-off. Xi Jinping, China’s president, is so focused on hard tech that he has cracked down on consumer-tech firms.But Mr Boskin’s laissez-faire approach is no longer in vogue among Western policymakers. They have introduced a sweep of policies intended to . In July America’s Congress passed the Chips and Science Act, which will dole out $52bn to the chip industry over five years, mostly to subsidise domestic production. Japan and Europe are also spending big on chips. The majority of the ’s €43bn ($49bn) package will subsidise “mega fabs”, or cutting-edge chip-fabrication plants. In August America also passed a climate-change package, worth nearly $400bn, stuffed with “made in the ” subsidies to be spent over ten years. West Virginia is getting wind farms; electric-vehicle battery factories are coming to Ohio.