The World Bank Used To Champion Markets. Now It's Surrendering to State-Led Industrialization.

This article adopts a decidedly libertarian critique of the World Bank's industrial policy endorsement, centering free-market ideology and using loaded language ('surrendering,' 'botch,' 'crowded out') to frame government intervention as economically irrational. The framing treats market mechanisms as inherently superior and positions industrial policy as politically motivated rather than economically justified, citing think tanks like Cato Institute while offering minimal substantive engagement with the World Bank report's actual methodology or counterarguments to the knowledge problem.

Primary voices: international body, think-tank analyst, think tank cited

• This article does not address historical examples where industrial policy arguably succeeded (e.g., Taiwan, South Korea, post-WWII Japan), despite claiming the historical record shows state-led industrialization does not work.
• This article does not explain why the World Bank specifically shifted its position beyond attributing it to geopolitical pressure from the U.S. and Europe, omitting potential shifts in economic evidence or new research.
• This article does not detail the specific 15 policy instruments mapped in the World Bank report or evaluate their actual risk profiles, instead dismissing them as 'dressed in more sophisticated language' without substantive analysis.