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Welcome to the era of the bossy state
Countries around the world want to bend companies to their will
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US President Joe Biden is pursuing an agenda of soft protectionism, industrial subsidies and righteous regulation.
PHOTO: REUTERS
The Economist
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The relationship between governments and businesses is always changing.
After 1945, many countries sought to rebuild society using firms that were state-owned and -managed. By the 1980s, faced with sclerosis in the West, the state retreated to become an umpire overseeing the rules for private firms to compete in a global market - a lesson learnt, in a fashion, by the communist bloc.
