Trump Nominee Miran Calls for Defense-Driven Industrial Policy

Stephen Miran, President Donald Trump’s pick to head the White House Council of Economic Advisers, called for an industrial policy centered on building up US defense capabilities.

“We need to engage in defense-driven industrial policy, directing procurement and R&D budgets to activities useful for modern national security,” Miran said in testimony prepared for his Senate confirmation hearing scheduled for Thursday. “Such policies gave us many critical technologies of the 20th century — the internet, radar, sonar, GPS — and helped create countless jobs.”

The Biden administration came under criticism from some free-market advocates for engaging in industrial policy ...