The United States is at an economic inflection point. After an extraordinary recovery from the costly disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic, the country is better positioned to succeed than most developed economies. But its ability to deliver long-term growth and improve Americans’ quality of life hinges on whether it can build at scale.

Building physical capacity—housing, energy generation, transmission lines, factories, data centers—is more critical to the U.S. economy today than it has been for decades. After 15 years of insufficient housing construction, the lack of affordable homes is lowering the country’s annual economic output, potentially by hundreds of billions of dollars. After 25 years of stagnant investment in energy networks, an inability to meet rising electricity demands risks increased consumer costs and more frequent blackouts. And for decades, the United States has failed to properly invest in the industrial capabilities necessary to build important infrastructure, including semiconductor factories, nuclear power plants, and critical supply chains. In the process, it has ceded some technological ground to China and other adversaries at a time of intensifying global competition over new technologies.

Meeting this imperative to build is not only essential for the United States’ success; it can define a pragmatic and politically successful economic policy. In recent years, the United States has enacted legislation that can help support more rapid and ambitious building. But now is the time to double down, by eliminating barriers imposed by all levels of government, embracing an environmentalism that prioritizes building, and delivering on a clear-eyed, pro-building industrial strategy to support critical national and economic security priorities.

Many of these goals are consistent with the rhetoric of President Donald Trump and some members of his administration. But the economic policy approach that the administration seems intent on pursuing will make it harder to unleash a building boom, with tariffs driving up costs for construction and manufacturing materials, political and economic uncertainty limiting investment, and massive tax cuts further ballooning the deficit and raising borrowing costs.

For those seeking a more constructive policy path forward, the answer is not just to resist and repair the damage from Trump’s policies. It is to craft a clear and compelling alternative vision of building in the United States and to create new coalitions to make this vision a reality. In economic terms, this means shifting the focus from the demand side to the supply side. Tools such as tax incentives and grants—although they may be necessary in many places—are not sufficient to overcome the web of procedural hurdles that drives up the cost of building. Nor can deregulation on its own reform the deeply embedded market structures that inhibit competition and keep costs high. In political terms, it means recognizing that both progressives and conservatives have contributed to these barriers and that solutions will require overturning entrenched bipartisan biases against building. An increasing number of voices on both the left and the right are identifying how policymakers at all levels of government have failed on this front, which is an important step. But reversing decades-long trends will require not only accurately diagnosing the problem but also advancing practical solutions.

It has become too hard and too expensive to build physical things in the United States. Construction productivity has fallen 40 percent in the past 50 years, and infrastructure construction costs are now more than double the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development average. Partly as a result, the United States is no longer a leader in many cutting-edge manufacturing industries. Regulatory challenges further exacerbate the difficulties: it takes years to complete the federal permitting process for projects requiring an environmental impact statement—the most comprehensive form of environmental review—and years in some cities to permit a multifamily housing project. In California, environmental-review lawsuits have sought to block the permitting of nearly half of all proposed housing units.

Building is often mistakenly treated as a second- or third-tier macroeconomic issue. In an economy fueled increasingly by services and intellectual property, it’s commonly thought that growth and innovation are driven by advances in knowledge-based sectors. But expanding the United States’ capacity to build is not just about bricks and mortar. Making enough affordable housing, generating sufficient electricity, and supporting cutting-edge technology development are necessary for innovation and productivity growth. As the........

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