It’s an election year, so here comes a ‘manufacturing crisis’ that isn’t

If your constant objective is to expand government’s permeation of society — to enlarge its role in the allocation of capital and opportunity — you have a permanent incentive to invent or misdescribe social problems. So, if you are a progressive, you will embrace the myth of a U.S. “manufacturing crisis.”

This is a perennial excuse for protectionism and other manifestations of “economic planning” by a supposedly clairvoyant government. Which is socialism, under the anodyne title of “industrial policy.”

You also might favor government going beyond mere control of imports. You might want it...