This talk draws on Governing Growth: US Industrial Policy from Hamilton to Trump, coauthored with Marco R. Di Tommaso. The United States is often portrayed as a free-market economy in which industrial policy represents a recent departure. The book challenges that view. It traces the federal government’s role in shaping industrial growth from Hamilton’s program for manufacturing to the Biden administration and Donald Trump’s second term, identifying both enduring patterns and important shifts. The analysis distinguishes industrial policy from broader macroeconomic management and examines both horizontal and sector-specific interventions. It asks why governments intervene, which firms, sectors, and regions they target, what instruments they employ, which political coalitions support them, and the what the results of these policies are. Building on this historical analysis, the talk concludes by distinguishing industrial policy from New Economic Statecraft (NES). Professor Aggarwal argues that NES combines industrial policy with behind-the-border, at-the-border, and beyond-the-border instruments to pursue foreign-policy and national-security objectives. The talk will also address the implications of this convergence for small and middle powers seeking to build economic capabilities while managing dependence on larger powers.

Vinod K. Aggarwal is Distinguished Professor and Alann P. Bedford Endowed Chair in the Travers Department of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also an Affiliated Professor at the Haas School of Business, Director of the Berkeley APEC Study Center, and a Fellow in the Public Law and Policy Program at Berkeley Law. He is founder and serves as Editor-in-Chief of Business and Politics (Cambridge University Press). He has held fellowships from the Brookings Institution, Rockefeller Foundation, Woodrow Wilson Center, and the Japan Foundation. He has been a Visiting Professor at the Geneva Graduate Institute, INSEAD, Yonsei University, Bocconi University, and NTU Singapore. Professor Aggarwal has published 25 books and more than 140 articles and book chapters. His recent books include Great Power Competition and Middle Power Strategies, The Oxford Handbook of Geoeconomics and Economic Statecraft, and Governing Growth: US Industrial Policy from Hamilton to Trump. He received his B.A. from the University of Michigan and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Stanford University.