Washington’s ‘Job Creation’ Circus Is Hitting the Road

It discourages genuine innovation and market-driven economic opportunities.

In the grand circus of politics, where elephants and donkeys alike perform under the big top, there's one act that never fails to draw a crowd: the venerable "job creation" routine. Putting people back to work, especially those without college degrees and in the manufacturing world, is in the center ring. Unfortunately, when you look behind the smoke, mirrors, and rabbits hidden in hats, you'll see that promises to rebuild America through industrial policy are just plain old corporate welfare. READ MORE from Veronique de Rugy: US Steel–Nippon Steel: A Global Deal for American Prosperity Industrial policy has made an amazing comeback. In its name, the Biden administration and Congress have authorized between $1.2 and $2.1 trillion in domestic subsidies for preferred manufacturing industries in sectors such as clean energy, advanced manufacturing, construction, transportation, and broadband. The ringmaster and his assistants assure the crowd that they'll deliver tens of thousands of new, high-paying jobs for workers with no more than high-school diplomas. Meanwhile, on the right, industrial policy is being discussed as a way to boost manufacturing employment for men left behind in the Rust Belt. The job-creation argument for showering businesses with billions more in subsidies might surprise those of you are aware of America's remarkably low unemployment rate. Indeed, given that handful of people will always be between jobs, a 3.9 percent rate signals that very few who want employment can't find it. Instead, what's animating these politicians is the exodus from the labor force of mostly poorly educated males. The reasons for this workforce withdrawal are complex and beyond the usual scapegoats, like trade and market forces. But this topic I will save for another column. Instead, let's focus on the reality that industrial policy subsidies and tax breaks will flow to companies, often big and rich, for projects they would likely have taken on anyway. That means they prob...