The DPC’s experience offers a roadmap for contemporary efforts to rebuild strategic industries and reduce dependence on adversarial supply chains. America’s reindustrialization challenge today is primarily a capital allocation problem. The question facing policymakers is not whether to use equity, loans, or purchase commitments, but how to design sustainable financing mechanisms that maximize private capital leverage while maintaining fiscal discipline and avoiding the rent-seeking and political capture that has undermined previous industrial policy efforts. The lessons can be distilled into the following principles.

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How can the United States quickly build secure, domestic supply chains for critical resources? It’s a question on minds in Washington, especially in the shadow of China’s tightening restrictions on the export of critical minerals, battery technology, and drone inputs to the United States. In early December 2024, Beijing announced a ban on the sale of gallium, germanium, and antimony to the United States—minerals critical for semiconductors, fiber optic cables, and solar cells. Fortunately, Washington has an industrial policy playbook for crash‑building essential supply chains at home and with allies, even if it’s little remembered. It was written in World War II, and the critical resource in question was rubber…

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