The Biden administration’s industrial policy, specifically the CHIPS and Science Act, appears to be having a serious real-world effect. Construction in the computers and electronics sector is setting records, and by a wide margin. The CHIPS (“Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors”—why do they find acronyms so irresistible?) Act was designed to bring semiconductor manufacturing back to the US. It was inspired by supply chain lessons from the pandemic—maybe having to source crucial industrial supplies from halfway around the world isn’t as brilliant an idea as it seemed at first—and to wean American industry from Chinese component makers as tensions between the two countries mount. According to a McKinsey summary, the law “directs” about $280 billion in new investments and […]