Assembly outdoors Paris final week, prime officers from France, Germany and Italy pledged to pursue a coordinated economic policy to counter stepped-up efforts by Washington and Beijing to guard their very own homegrown companies.

The three European international locations have joined the parade of others which might be enthusiastically embracing industrial insurance policies — the catchall time period for quite a lot of measures like focused subsidies, tax incentives, laws and commerce restrictions — meant to steer an financial system.

Greater than 2,500 industrial insurance policies had been launched final yr, roughly thrice the quantity in 2019, in accordance with a new study. And most had been imposed by the richest, most superior economies — a lot of which may beforehand be counted on to criticize such ways.

The measures are usually common at residence, however the pattern is worrying some worldwide leaders and economists who warn that such top-down financial interventions may find yourself slowing worldwide progress.

The sharpened debate is bound to be on show on the financial lollapalooza that opened Wednesday in Washington — in any other case often known as the annual spring meetings of the Worldwide Financial Fund and the World Financial institution.

“There are alternative ways of capturing your self within the foot,” M. Ayhan Kose, the deputy chief economist of the World Financial institution, stated concerning the pattern of wealthy international locations pursuing industrial insurance policies. “That is a method of doing it.”

And in a speech final week, Kristalina Georgieva, the I.M.F.’s managing director, cautioned that besides in extraordinary circumstances, the case for presidency intervention was weak.

Whether or not and the way ardently governments ought to attempt to management their economies has been vigorously debated for the reason that Industrial Revolution. The present wave of insurance policies, although, is a stark distinction to the traditional open markets, hands-off authorities ideology championed by the citadels of capitalism in current a long time.

That religion within the superiority of free-market insurance policies was deeply shaken in recent times by a string of world jolts — the pandemic, provide chain meltdowns, hovering inflation and rates of interest, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and rising tensions between the US and China.

In lots of capitals, safety, resilience and self-sufficiency had been pushed to the entrance of the record of financial coverage objectives together with progress and effectivity.

After years of complaints about China’s subsidies of personal and state-owned industries, the US and Europe have more and more copied Beijing’s playbook, enterprise multibillion-dollar industrial insurance policies centered on important expertise and local weather change.

The United States handed two mammoth payments in 2022 to strengthen its home semiconductor trade and renewable vitality sector. Europe handed its personal Green Deal Industrial Plan final yr to hurry the vitality transition. Quickly after, South Korea authorised the K-Chips Act to help its semiconductor manufacturing.

“A couple of years in the past, once I was beginning out as finance minister, you couldn’t pronounce the phrases ‘European financial coverage’ or ‘European industrial coverage,’” Bruno Le Maire, France’s finance minister, stated final week after the ministers’ assembly.

Their embrace of business insurance policies hasn’t stopped Western international locations from criticizing China’s ways. Final yr, the European Union accused China of flooding the market with low-cost electrical autos backed by the federal government.

This week, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen complained that Chinese language subsidies of inexperienced vitality had been pushing American and European corporations out of enterprise.

Constructive value determinations of business insurance policies usually have grown in recent times. One overview of the topic by a group that included Dani Rodrik, a Harvard economist, discovered that the “current crop of papers presents usually a extra optimistic tackle industrial coverage,” in contrast with the standard “knee-jerk opposition from economists.”

Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning professor at Columbia College, has called industrial coverage a “no-brainer.”

However many economists like Mr. Kose of the World Financial institution stay skeptics, arguing that the majority industrial insurance policies will find yourself lowering general progress, making issues worse moderately than higher.

In response to the newest wave of interventions, the I.M.F. has drawn up a brand new set of guidelines for when and the way industrial insurance policies ought to be carried out.

There are positive factors, if they’re finished proper and used to deal with a unprecedented market failure, like the hazards posed by local weather change, the I.M.F. says. Which means clearly figuring out the social advantages like limiting greenhouse gases, broadly sharing improvements throughout borders and refraining from discriminating in opposition to international corporations.

However a lot of the evaluation has been dedicated to how straightforward it’s to get issues mistaken, by misallocating or losing cash, giving highly effective enterprise pursuits an excessive amount of sway over authorities choices or setting off a tit-for-tat commerce struggle.

“What stands out about this present resurgence is that there’s a reliance on pricey subsidies,” stated Period Dabla-Norris, an writer of the evaluation. And these are sometimes “mixed with different sorts of discriminatory measures in opposition to international corporations.”

When protectionist measures distort world commerce and funding flows, she stated, “the worldwide financial system loses out.”

Governments meddle in markets for all types of causes — to forestall job losses, spur investments into a selected sector or freeze out a geopolitical rival.

Of the two,500 interventions launched final yr, defending home industries accounted for the most important chunk, adopted by combating local weather change or shoring up provide chains, in accordance with a study finished along side the I.M.F. Measures that cited nationwide safety because the motivation made up the smallest share.

The info additionally suggested that when a rustic launched a subsidy, there was roughly a 75 p.c probability that inside a yr, one other nation would introduce an analogous one on the identical product.

As fears about Europe’s capability to compete with the US and China improve, the European Union appears decided to maneuver forward with extra coordinated financial interventions — though its members don’t essentially agree on which of them.

France has proposed essentially the most aggressive measures, together with a provision to order half of public spending from industrial coverage on European-made services and products, whereas Germany has been extra skeptical of Purchase Europe approaches.

However there may be help throughout the board for rising funding, slashing cumbersome laws and selling a single market for investments and financial savings.

In February, the European Parliament agreed to extend its personal inexperienced industrial capability, and in March, the bloc adopted regulations to safe its provide of important uncooked supplies and bolster native manufacturing. Members additionally proposed for the primary time a joint defense industrial strategy.

The French, German and Italian financial ministers have been gathering to develop insurance policies to stimulate inexperienced and digital applied sciences earlier than E.U. leaders meet this yr to undertake a brand new five-year strategic plan.

Now that “the time period ‘industrial coverage’ is not taboo,” stated Mr. Le Maire, France’s finance minister, “Europe wants to point out its enamel, and present that it’s decided to defend its trade.”