The history of industrial policy in the United States is almost as old as the nation itself. Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury, presented .the Congress with his Report on Manufactures in 1791. That report directly confronts the argument that the nation should depend on agriculture, and proposes a number of policies to the Congress that would promote the development of manufacturing industries in the new nation. The report includes a section on technological innovation and one on what we would now call standards and regulation.
Much of Hamilton's third report was eventually adopted by the United States Congress after its issuance despite strong opposition to the support of industry through subsidy. Both sides agreed that manufacturing independence was desirable and necessary but disagreed on how to obtain it. The Jeffersonian Democratic-Republican Party's main objection to subsidy was their fear that subsidy would lead to corruption and favoritism of certain sections of the new nation over others; namely the north over the agrarian south. This divide (north vs. south) would come up again and again in issues of economic policy until the outbreak of the American Civil War.
In response Congress adopted the report's entire recommendation with the exception of subsidy to industry; favoring increasing tariff rates and import restrictions to encourage manufacturing (which incidentally led many manufacturers to switch party allegiance from Federalist to Republican, being upset at Hamilton's moderate tariff policy).
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