ABSTRACT
The success of American agriculture on world markets is to no small degree a function of a particular type of industrial policy. Much of the seemingly increasing demand for an industrial policy arises from the perception that the United States can no longer compete on world markets and that; as a consequence, our country has become "deindustrialized." The financial system of the United States has been cited as being particularly unhelpful in maintaining or expanding the industrial base of the country. The politics of formulating any meaningful industrial policy within the political and ideological context of the United States–even if such a strategy were desirable–are extremely problematic. American politics is much better at making distributive decisions in which all participants and all parts of the country receive some share of the pie. The politics of interest groups in the United States has been the politics of access.
