The blue wall looks strong. Even before the rousing Democratic National Convention in Chicago, August polling showed that Kamala Harris had pulled ahead of Donald Trump in three key Midwestern swing states — Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. This is down to her ability to channel a mood of optimism rather than fear, Trump’s own mis-steps and the fact that 30 per cent of the private sector investments into strategic sectors supported by the Biden administration has gone to places like the industrial Midwest. 

That investment in those areas most affected by trade shocks wasn’t accidental. As a recent Brookings Institution paper points out, it is part of a systemic approach taken by this White House to do three things: alleviate the downward spiral in the communities most affected by the China shock of 2000-2012, fortify economies at high risk of future disruption and rush private investment into key new sectors such as semiconductors, clean energy and biomedical equipment.

People often refer to this as industrial policy. But you might also call it systems thinking, meaning solving problems not as one-offs but as part of a broader strategy that connects the dots in order to deal with root causes rather than symptoms. In this case the dots are economic and political and they fall across different issues, geographies and sectors.