Daleep Singh on the Need for a US Industrial Policy Playbook

**Daleep Singh** (0:04)
I think good industrial policy builds markets, not monopolies. I don't think the goal of any of these interventions should be permanent dependence on public support. The government's role, I think, should shrink as private capital scales up and markets mature. That's the most successful examples of industrial policy, like the Reconstruction Finance Corporation or DARPA, or to be fair, Operation Warp Speed. They were all mission-driven, they were all time-bound and they were all grounded in the theory of market failure.

**Jason Bordoff** (0:33)
The global economy is shifting toward increased fragmentation and competition. And since President Donald Trump began his second term, the state has taken unprecedented action in the US private sector. The federal government's investments in critical minerals mining and in Intel are two examples. And the Trump administration has also embraced tariffs, framing them as tools for economic security and a domestic industrial revival. And there's actually some bipartisan support for state intervention into private markets in the name of national security and economic security. But these shifts have major implications for energy security and for the clean energy transition. How can this new form of American state capitalism be conceptualized? Are the Trump administration's use of these tools different from prior US government programs to support critical industries like the Biden administration's investments under the CHIPS Act? And what are the best strategies for aligning industrial policy with goals around energy security, supply chain resilience and innovation? This is Columbia Energy Exchange, a weekly podcast from the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. I'm Jason Bordoff.
Today on the show, Daleep Singh. Daleep is Vice Chair and Chief Global Economist at PGIM and a thought leader on global policy and macroeconomic trends. He first joined PGIM in 2022 before serving the Biden administration as Deputy National Security Advisor for International Economics and Deputy Director of the National Economic Council. He also served as the US Sherpa to the G7, G20 and APEC. Earlier in his career, he held roles at the New York Federal Reserve and the US Treasury Department. Daleep joined me to discuss how the US deploys economic statecraft and the need for a framework to guide its use. We talk about industrial policy and how it can be used to boost supply chain resilience, safeguard energy security, and maintain our technological edge. Daleep also shares why he thinks we need new economic tools and institutional mechanisms like sovereign wealth funds to improve our economic competitiveness. I hope you enjoy our conversation. Daleep Singh, good to see you again, my friend. Thanks for making time to be with us on Columbia Energy Exchange. Great to talk to you. I'm excited.

**Daleep Singh** (2:55)
My pleasure, Jason. Good to be with you.

**Jason Bordoff** (2:57)
There's a lot of things I want to talk to you about, but to give all of our listeners on an energy podcast, sort of an understanding of why I'm so excited to talk to you and why what you have spent your career doing is so important for the energy sector, energy geopolitical risk, energy transition. Can you just explain your role in government? And what the intersection is between national security and international economics?

**Daleep Singh** (3:21)
Yeah, so I've had three different stints in government. One at the Treasury Department, which is where you and I met. And then I was at the Fed running the markets group that implements monetary policy. And I was there during the most acute phase of the COVID pandemic. And then after Joe Biden was elected, Jake Sullivan asked if I would come to the White House and be a deputy national security advisor for international economics.
And that's a mouthful, so I have trouble saying it. But basically, the job was to take on issues at the intersection of economics and national security. So if you think about how do we boost supply chain resilience? How do we safeguard energy security? How do we maintain our technological edge? What's the right way to use the punitive toolkit of statecraft? How should we think about a positive affirmative agenda? Those are the types of issues I got into.

**Jason Bordoff** (4:11)
And like you said, we met when I first joined the Obama administration and you were at the Treasury Department, I think, before the very senior political appointee roles you've had in a civil servant position is in how you, I think, initially got into Treasury. And we were working, it's funny, I hadn't actually thought of this in bringing you on to the podcast, but, you know, I suspect we will talk a fair amount about the role of government of the state in private enterprise, in today's new world of fragmentation and competition. And we were working together on things like, could we take oil off the market to apply pressure to Iran? And what would the oil market impacts be? Or should we release oil from the strategic petroleum reserve after the loss of oil supply from Libya? Those are all the sort of market crafter type policies that seem antiquated now, relative to the scale of what both sides of the aisle have in mind when they talk about government policy intervening in a market. In my case, it was oil.