pcr makes a great point that seems the sort of thing that should have already been the practice;

Is it past time for the United States to have an industrial policy?

Paul Craig Roberts

Mark Fasteau and Ian Fletcher have given us a well researched and thoroughly documented study of the important role that an industrial policy could play. In 692 pages of text, 107 pages of footnotes, 18 pages of bibliography, and 12 pages of index, the authors come close to exhausting the subject in their book, Industrial Policy for the United States.

Industrial policy was last heard of in the United States back in the 1970s and 1980s when a few on the liberal-left believed that the US economy required more government regulation than it had. At that time industrial policy had a bad reputation. It had been utilized in Japan.  Sony had been told not to manufacture and market quality sound, and Honda had been told not to enter automobile production. Both companies ignored the industrial policy, and their successes are well known stories.

Previously, I had no use for industrial policy, seeing it as just another opportunity for government to misdirect the economy.  In the passing years, events have made me see, in principal, the usefulness of an industrial policy. However, I doubt that industrial policy would be any more likely to escape being captured by interest groups than any other regulatory policy..........more...........