We are living through a historic inflection point—the passing of a decades-long economic obsession with maximized efficiency and unqualified free trade. Overseas, this obsession has prompted an explosion of economic growth and technological change. But here in the United States, families have fallen apart, communities have imploded, and entire industries have ceased to exist. Americans, leaders and citizens alike, must finally face this challenge head-on. It’s time to dust off the economic playbook that made America the most prosperous and powerful country in the world. It’s time to revive the American System.

The term “American System” was coined by the statesman Henry Clay in the early 19th century, but it refers to something as old as the republic itself—the use of public policy to support domestic manufacturing and develop emerging industries. You wouldn’t know it from today’s market-liberal economists, but this has been the preferred approach of virtually every major leader in our country’s history.