Chips off the menu; a new kind of industrial policy is required

As the UK’s automotive manufacturing sector copes with the administrative burden of Brexit (fortunately without tariffs and with no limits, as yet, on EU market access) and emerges from COVID-induced economic slowdown, the lack of semiconductors (chips in common parlance) is hitting the industry where it hurts – in its supply chain run on just-in-time principles. Global forces are having as big an impact on UK production as any Brexit-induced shocks have had to date