Dayton, OH Correspondent — Targeted support for genuine chokepoints can be justified. Broad multi-year programs across many sectors risk permanent dependence and political allocation.

The manufacturing construction number is the striking thing this year. Spending on factory building has roughly doubled and it’s concentrated in semiconductors and batteries, which is the policy working exactly as designed.

Whether those plants operate profitably in 2030 is a separate question and it’s the one that matters. A subsidy that builds a building is easy. A subsidy that produces a competitive industry is rare.

Owatonna, MN Correspondent — Narrow security-focused support can be justified. Multi-sector programs create dependents and invite capture.

I’d note the historical record honestly, because both sides misuse it. Industrial policy has worked in some places and times and failed in others, and the variable is usually whether the state could withdraw support from failures.

Ours cannot. Every subsidy in the American system acquires a district within two years, and districts don’t lapse. That’s the structural argument against, and it isn’t about economics.

Orange County, CA Correspondent — Strategic exceptions for true chokepoints are one thing. Broad industrial policy as the default creates rent-seeking.

The execution problem is now visible. The semiconductor money has moved slowly, the conditions attached grew during rulemaking, and the largest recipient has delayed its Arizona production start partly over workforce.

That’s not an argument against the goal. It’s a demonstration that money is the easy input and the constraints are labor, permitting, and time.

Bismarck, ND Correspondent — Help with real security bottlenecks. Don’t make subsidies the ordinary way of running an economy.

On decoupling: cut dependence in what matters for security and keep ordinary trade. The agricultural exposure is the one I’d watch, because we sell a great deal into that market and a genuine rupture lands on this state directly.

Nobody making the strategic argument has said what happens to soybeans.

Tyler, Texas Correspondent — A short list with a sunset and a customer is a signal you’ll pay for security. A standing carnival of credits is a market you replaced with a senator.

Critical is the word on decoupling. Decouple there and manage the rest.

Interdependence as a doctrine is what we tried, and it didn’t liberalise the counterpart. It specialized them in the valve.

Keep the list short and enforced. Long and polite is a press release.

Jacksonville, FL Correspondent — Ports move whatever a market makes and also whatever a credit makes for a while.

The trade data this year is worth stating. Direct imports from China have fallen substantially and imports from Mexico and Vietnam have risen, and a meaningful share of that is the same goods with an intermediate stop.

So some of what’s being described as decoupling is a rerouting, and the strategic dependence may be less reduced than the headline suggests. Somebody should be measuring content rather than origin.

Cheyenne, WY Correspondent — Pay for the valve, not for the catalogue. Sunsets. Product out the door.

If they need you forever it wasn’t strategic, it was a client.

Knoxville, TN Correspondent — Public works waits on a controller and that wait justifies a targeted line. It doesn’t justify a permanent industrial congress in the tax code.

On the decoupling half: no single adversarial address on the part that stops a hospital or a substation. Explicit there, managed on everything else, and everything else is most of the catalogue.

Novi, MI Correspondent — Automotive is where these two questions meet and the meeting is uncomfortable.

The battery supply chain is Chinese at almost every stage — refining, cathode, cell. The subsidies are designed to build a domestic version and the fastest way to do it is a licensing arrangement with a Chinese firm, which is politically radioactive and technically the only route available this decade.

So the industrial policy and the decoupling policy are in direct conflict in my industry right now, and nobody in Washington has resolved it.

Las Vegas, NV Correspondent — A floor full of devices shouldn’t go dark on a mood in another capital.

Critical technology gets a second geography. The rest is invoices, and invoices are interdependence you can live with.

Sydney, Australia Correspondent — I’d report what the subsidies look like from an ally’s side, which is less flattering than the domestic debate assumes.

Your content requirements pull investment out of allied countries and into yours. We have critical minerals and we’re being told to process them for a market that gives preference to processing done in America.

That’s a rational domestic policy and it’s also economic nationalism aimed partly at friends. If the strategy is allied resilience, the rules should say allied. Currently they say domestic and the exemptions are negotiated one country at a time.

Clermont, FL Correspondent — My clients don’t receive any of this and they pay for it.

That’s the distributional point nobody makes. Industrial policy at this scale bids up construction labor, equipment, and electrical capacity in the regions where it lands, and a small firm building anything competes against a subsidized project for the same crew.

I’m not against the goal. I’d like somebody to count the crowding-out, because it’s real and it’s local and it never appears in the case for the program.