President Trump’s recently announced steel and aluminum tariffs now form the foundation for an economy-wide industrial policy that will enable the White House to pick tariff-avoiding winners and tariff-paying losers. By selecting steel and aluminum, basic metals for an almost-endless list of firms and industries, and by giving the tariff program a national defense rationale, the White House artfully made Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross America’s industrial policy czar.

The mechanism by which these winners and losers are to be determined was described in a March 19 Federal Register notice bearing this ponderous title: “Requirements for Submissions Requesting Exclusions From the Remedies Instituted in Presidential Proclamations Adjusting Imports of Steel Into the United States and Adjusting Imports of Aluminum Into the United States; and the Filing of Objections to Submitted Exclusion Requests for Steel and Aluminum.”