Economic Security Is National Security: The Future of the Defense Production Act - American Affairs Journal

Economic Security Is National Security: The Future of the Defense Production Act - American Affairs Journal

Congress should not retreat from the DPA’s historic role as a flexible tool to secure the general economic stability of the United States. The economic origins and application of the Defense Production Act may strike some as counterintuitive and unusual. That’s because the DPA is a modern outlier—a vestige of the pre-neoliberal era, when policymakers pursued national and economic security needs in concert. We forget the lessons of this history a…