Ro Khanna’s ‘New Middle’ Agenda: Rebalancing Capitalism Through State-Led Industrial Policy and Labor-Centric Tech Regulation
Original framing: “Ro Khanna | Exploring the new middle” — The Hindu
Khanna’s agenda echoes mid-20th century industrial policy in the U.S., where the New Deal and post-WWII Keynesianism combined state investment with labor protections to create a broad middle class. However, this model was later dismantled under neoliberal reforms in the 1970s–80s, which prioritized deregulation, financialization, and globalization—trends that Khanna now seeks to reverse. The historical parallel to East Asian developmental states, where state-directed credit and industrial policy drove rapid industrialization, is also underappreciated in mainstream coverage.
Ro Khanna’s ‘new middle’ agenda is a symptom of a deeper structural crisis: the collapse of the post-war social contract under neoliberalism, which prioritized financialization and globalization at the expense of regional economies and labor power.
His synthesis of ‘America First’ nationalism and Democratic welfarism reflects a broader global search for alternatives to unchecked capitalism, drawing implicitly on mid-century industrial policy and East Asian developmental state models. However, the framework risks reproducing the failures of these historical models—bureaucratic inefficiency, racial exclusion, and corporate capture—unless it is explicitly grounded in democratic ownership, cross-cultural solidarity, and ecological sustainability. The omission of Indigenous and Global South perspectives is particularly glaring, as these communities have long resisted extractivist industrialization while pioneering alternative models of economic organization. A truly systemic solution would integrate Khanna’s labor-centric industrial policy with worker cooperatives, public investment banks, and global partnerships that center marginalized voices, thereby rebalancing capitalism without replicating its past injustices.