One other thing to keep in mind is that the industrial politics of 2020 is not the same as that of the 1970s and 1980s. This is no longer about protecting inefficient domestic firms from international competition. Firstly, it is nominally American firms that have outsourced production to China that would be expected to oppose partial repatriation of supply chains. Rather than clamoring for protection, corporate America would oppose partial repatriation of supply chains. After all, these firms would now be required to invest in American production facilities and American workers alongside their investments in China as a condition of access to the American market. Good. Let them and their lobbyists cry about it.

Secondly, we should not necessarily expect that American firms would be the sole (or even primary) beneficiaries of a policy that demanded increased domestic production. If foreign-owned firms profit by investing in American factories and American workers, so much the better. The goal should be having a base of manufacturing plants and skilled workers so as to lessen our dependence on potentially hostile foreign regimes, and not in rooting for the superficially national branding of transnational corporations.

We should recognize that this policy is neither blind to the national interest nor utopian.