The motivation for backward-looking investment is clear. The U.S. economy is no stranger to industry shocks, nor their long-term economic and sociopolitical consequences. At multiple points in recent decades, sudden shifts in industry dynamics, supply chains, and trade relationships have levied immense economic burdens on the communities most reliant on those sectors, creating pockets of distress and disinvestment in places once considered America's industrial hubs. Witness the most severe of these shocks: the "China shock" of 2000 to 2012, when a surge in low-cost imports following China's 2001 admission to the World Trade Organization erased millions of U.S. manufacturing jobs. Many of the communities this displacement hurt most still have not fully recovered.
Authors
- Pages
- 13
- Published in
- United States of America
Table of Contents
- Past trade shocks are a key motivation for place-based industrial strategy 2
- Increased imports from China disproportionately impacted specialized manufacturing communities in the southern and midwestern US 3
- Place-based policies and recent private investment are buoying trade-impacted counties 4
- Strategic sector investments have been announced in trade-impacted counties at a significantly higher level than their economic output and population share 5
- Seventy-two trade-affected counties are receiving private strategic sector investment though most funding is concentrated in select semiconductor megaprojects 6
- Investments in trade-impacted counties Investments M Projects N 7
- Place-based policies and associated private investment may also be supporting the clean energy transition 7
- The counties at highest risk from the energy transition are different from those most impacted by the first China shock 9
- Investments in carbon-dependent counties are overwhelmingly targeted toward clean energy production and heavy manufacturing 12
- Investments in carbon-dependent counties Investments M Projects N 13
- Place-based policies and related private investment are tools both for remediating past economic shocks and future-proofing vulnerable places 13
