Eager residents of Moncure and Merry Oaks, N.C., gathered in August 2022 to learn the route of new roads promised as part of a record‐​setting state subsidy package for Vietnamese electric‐​vehicle manufacturer VinFast. The state’s answer: straight through 27 homes, five businesses and a local Baptist church that’s been there since 1888.

Shocked attendees protested the unusually quick plan and asked the state Transportation Department whether amended plans might spare their properties. Probably not, officials replied, because the factory was opening in 2024 and the department was on a “tight schedule.” A few modest changes later, the bulldozers were ready to steam ahead, including over that historic church.

But Merry Oaks is still standing. VinFast has announced that the facility won’t open until “at least 2025,” and locals are wondering whether the project—which was one year ago the crown jewel of state “economic development”—will ever be finished. So much for that tight schedule.

The episode is distressing in its own right but provides important lessons about industrial policy, which is en vogue among “national conservatives” who see swing‐​state subsidies like these as an essential ingredient in their political project.

In VinFast’s case, what looked like a slam‐​dunk state investment in 2022 looks different today. Not only have higher interest rates deflated the tech sector; VinFast has suffered other setbacks. Its U.S. sales were delayed by software problems and further crimped by ineligibility for new U.S. tax credits, which the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act provides only to vehicles made in North America. Thus, by mid‐​May 2023, VinFast had delivered only 310 of the 999 electric vehicles it had promised American buyers by the end of last year, and the company’s VF8 model had received the worst reviews of any new automobile in recent history. This week the company was forced to recall its entire U.S. fleet because a dashboard display error could “increase the risk of a crash.”

VinFast has recalled thousands of vehicles in Vietnam, delayed its initial public offering indefinitely, fired its U.S. chief financial officer and dozens of other North American employees, and lost three more U.S. sales executives. A new $2.5 billion capital injection from the company’s billionaire owner is useful, but VinFast lost $2.1 billion last year alone. The Tar Heel State picked a lemon.

Industrial policies rarely account for other government laws and regulations that impede a plan’s implementation. The Inflation Reduction Act’s protectionist subsidies will discourage VinFast’s U.S. sales and thus reduce available revenue to fund its North Carolina expansion. State and federal environmental regulations have thwarted the company’s ambitious construction and production schedules. Wetlands and waterways permits are still pending, after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers returned VinFast’s 284‐​page application for more information.

In Vietnam, the company built an entire factory in 21 months. Here, it’ll be lucky to obtaining all needed construction permits in that time.

Industrial‐​policy plans often run into unexpected political and legal problems regarding their design and implementation. Even before the VinFast project stalled, North Carolina’s giveaway to a foreign company raised eyebrows. At the time of the award, VinFast had never sold a car in the U.S. Given the state’s long and unsuccessful quest to land an automobile manufacturer, the plan reeked of political desperation, not sound economics. Now it smells worse.

The government’s expedited seizure of local property for manifestly commercial purposes—promised roads and related infrastructure to support only VinFast’s factory—is also a classic case of eminent‐​domain abuse. While the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Kelo v. City of New London (2005) that government may take private property for commercial purposes, many states have since outlawed the practice. North Carolina hasn’t.

Many on the left undoubtedly see these and related problems as mere speed bumps on the road to national progress, whether on climate change or any government priority. But some on the right embrace industrial policy too, with little acknowledgment that it often requires the expansion and exercise of state power in ways that undermine the economy and achieve the left’s priorities. State planning tends to trample on the principles, communities and people that national conservatives supposedly hold dear.

The corporate facility at issue in Kelo was never built, but the “little pink house” was bulldozed anyway. Maybe if the Merry Oaks Baptist Church suffers the same fate, “conservatives” who embrace industrial policy will reconsider their approach.