Q3 Concentration: Package HHI ~5,320 — US Owns 71% of War-Chest Dollars, IRA Alone ~59%

Our H-NIPO research ledger mapped the stock: jurisdictions using trade-distorting subsidies nearly doubled from 36% to 59%, and China, the EU, and the United States together account for roughly 53% of the historical tape. The Q3 chokepoint update then answered the targeting question — strategic / dual-use subsidy shares inside the Big Three now sit at 76–98%. The 2026 concentration print introduced the distribution ladder. This Q3 concentration lens sharpens the same core question desks actually trade: how concentrated is this system at the top of the distribution? — and adds the meters that change the read once you stop treating “industrial policy is everywhere” as a single market share.

The dashboard above is built as a four-view concentration toolkit. Toggle HHI radar, Share ladders, Sectoral packages, and Vintage slope. The punchline is deliberately multi-sided. On major fiscal-package dollars, concentration is extreme: analytical HHI ≈ 5,320, the United States alone is about 71% of the CHIPS/IRA/EU/CN/JP/KR war-chest universe, and the same Big Three clear roughly 93%. Zoom inside the US rollup and IRA clean-energy tax expenditures alone are ~83% of US package dollars — about 59% of the entire five-jurisdiction universe. On intervention counts, the top is thick but not monopolistic: top-1 near 24%, top-3 near 63%, stock HHI ≈ 1,846. Monthly flow sits flatter still — June’s Roundup still leaves 62% to the rest of the world.

The Q3 headline ladder: top-1, top-3, and HHI

Read the table as a family of market shares, not one number. Count-based top-3 sits in a 48–63% band depending on vintage. Dollar-based top-3 among large packages sits near 93%. Sectoral concentration inside the US rollup is even sharper. Flow-based top-3 in a single busy month can fall to 38%. Analysts who quote only the Big Three stock share understate how dollarised US packages dominate fiscal capacity; analysts who quote only IRA headlines understate how many capitals still generate the daily intervention count.

HHI radar: why dollars and counts are different markets

Open HHI radar. The horizontal bars rank analytical Herfindahl indexes on the stated bucket shares. Package dollars clear the field near 5,320. Stock counts sit near 1,846 — concentrated relative to an equal six-way split, but nowhere near a single-jurisdiction monopoly. June flow drops under 1,000 once rest-of-world’s 62% share is in the mix. The US sectoral two-slice (IRA TE vs CHIPS) prints the sharpest HHI in the panel (~7,130) because a two-bucket ledger with an 83/17 split is definitionally extreme.

That ordering is the Q3 contribution relative to a simple top-3 quote. Top-3 shares can look “similar” across lenses when they are not. A top-3 of 63% on counts and 93% on packages both sound concentrated in prose; the HHI meter shows they are different industrial-organisation objects. The scatter next to the bars plots each lens by top-1 (x) and top-3 (y): package dollars and US sectoral slices sit in the upper-right; June flow sits lower-left; stock counts occupy the middle.

Dollar concentration: war chests are a different distribution

Switch to Share ladders and set the Lorenz curve to Package dollars. Among the major semiconductor and clean-tech fiscal headlines we roll up — US IRA clean-energy tax expenditures (~$370B original score), US CHIPS appropriations ($52.7B) and ITC (~$24B), EU Chips mobilisation (~$47B), EU IPCEI state aid (~$40B), China’s Big Fund III (~$48B), plus Japan and Korea semiconductor envelopes — the United States alone is ~71% of the dollar universe and the top three jurisdictions clear ~93%.

This remains the sharpest top-1 / top-3 print on the jurisdiction ladder, and it answers a different policy question than NIPO counts. Counts ask who intervenes how often. Package dollars ask who can put nine- and ten-figure claims on factory geography. A jurisdiction that records many firm-level awards can look “active” on the count ladder while still lacking US-scale tax-credit and appropriation capacity. Conversely, a single IRA-sized tax-expenditure envelope can dominate a dollar pie without matching China’s historical intervention count share.

Treat the package pie as a war-chest index, not an outlay tracker. Appropriations, mobilisation targets, state-aid approvals, equity-fund raises, and tax-credit scores are not interchangeable cash. They are comparable as political commitments: fiscal industrial policy, measured in headline dollars among the large packages, is more concentrated than the intervention stock.

Sectoral packages: IRA TE is the hidden top-1

The Q3 dashboard’s Sectoral packages view zooms one level deeper. Inside the ~$447B US rollup, IRA clean-energy tax expenditures are ~83% and CHIPS (appropriations + ITC) about 17%. Against the five-jurisdiction universe (~$626B), IRA alone is roughly 59%. That is the shareable Q3 statistic most desks miss when they stop at “US 71%.”

Why it matters for concentration analysis: the US lead on package dollars is not a balanced CHIPS-plus-green portfolio in headline-dollar terms. It is green tax-expenditure dominance with a semiconductor rider. Semiconductor industrial policy is geopolitically loud; clean-energy tax expenditures are fiscally large. Mixing those stories without a sectoral split overstates how “chip race” dollars drive the fiscal capacity ladder and understates how IRA TE shapes the top of the distribution.

The stacked bar and universe-share toggles are there so readers can flip between absolute billions and share-of-universe without losing the jurisdiction pie on the same view.

Count concentration: thick top, living tail

Back on Share ladders, filter the curve to Stock counts. The cumulative curve rises to about 24% at top-1, 45% at top-2, and 63% at top-3 — the Teneo Big Three share of cumulative industrial-policy interventions. Japan and Korea add a thin next rung; rest-of-world still holds roughly 28% of the stock in our six-bucket reconstruction.

That is concentrated relative to an equal six-way split. It is not a winner-take-all market. A system where the top three hold three-fifths of recorded interventions still leaves a long tail of capitals that can start subsidy races, copy HS6 product lists, or free-ride on templates written in Washington, Brussels, and Beijing. Our August 202608 toolkit update already flagged the same asymmetry in monthly data: Big Three headlines dominate narrative; rest-of-world counts still dominate parts of the flow.

IMF’s H-NIPO check sits a notch lower — China+EU+US at 53% of the 2009–2023 stock — and the 2023 census alone put the same trio at about 48% of 2,580 measures. Different windows, different coding intensity, same qualitative story: the top is thick; the middle and tail remain politically alive.

Vintage slope: top-3 is not a monotone story

Open Vintage slope. Plotting disclosed (and estimated) top-3 shares across H-NIPO (53%), the 2023 census (48%), Teneo cumulative stock (63%), and June 2026 flow (38%) shows why a single “concentration is rising” slogan fails. Census intensity, cumulative stock coding, and monthly flow geography are different instruments. The June print in particular warns against equating stock concentration with flow concentration: rest-of-world can still dominate a month’s tape even when the cumulative ledger is Big-Three heavy.

Toggle to Top-1 % and the slope flattens further — estimated top-1 shares cluster near 18–24% on count vintages and 20% on June flow, while package-dollar top-1 (71%) lives on a different chart entirely. The Q3 lesson is methodological as much as empirical: pick the meter before you pick the narrative.

Strategic intensity and toolkit mix still reshape the top

Concentration is not only who intervenes; it is what they intervene with. The HHI view’s strategic panel restates the ZG #88 punchline: China’s dual-use / advanced-tech subsidy share sits near 98%, the US near 76% (up from ~33% in the early window), and the EU near 70%. The toolkit donut reminds readers that subsidies still dominate the distortive mix (~55% in our approximate cross-section), with import barriers (~27%) and export/other measures filling the rest — and the US alone still accounts for roughly 20% of 2025 import-barrier actions in the theme’s toolkit framing.

That combination — concentrated fiscal packages, thick but not monopolistic intervention counts, strategic targeting converging upward inside the Big Three — is how subsidies, tariffs, and industrial policy reshape economies at the top of the distribution without requiring a single global monopoly capital.

Caveats

• Individual China / US / EU count splits inside the Teneo Big Three 63% are estimated so the ladder sums; treat top-1 stock (~24%) as order-of-magnitude, not a census microdata print.
• Package USD figures mix appropriations, mobilisation targets, state-aid approvals, fund raises, and tax-credit scoresnot outlays-to-date and not dollar-for-dollar comparable.
• HHI values are analytical indexes on the stated bucket shares, not official competition-authority statistics; changing the bucket set changes the index.
• IRA TE (~$370B) is an original score, not a realised cash-flow series; later CBO / JCT restatements can move the sectoral split.
• June 2026 flow is one month’s Roundup geographyuseful as a flow check, not a substitute for multi-year stock.
• Strategic intensity shares are percent of subsidy-based IP actions, not percent of dollars.
• Toolkit instrument mix is an approximate theme cross-section for orientation; do not treat the donut as a global national-accounts allocation.

The shareable takeaway

Fiscal and industrial policy is concentrated at the top — but which top depends on the meter. Among major war-chest headlines, package-dollar HHI is about 5,320, US top-1 about 71%, and Big Three about 93%. Inside the US rollup, IRA TE alone is ~83% of US package dollars and ~59% of the tracked universe. On cumulative intervention counts, top-1 is about 24% and top-3 about 63%. On June’s monthly tape, top-3 falls to 38% with rest-of-world still at 62%. Subsidies, tariffs, and industrial policy reshape economies through a system that looks diversified in country counts and top-heavy once you rank dollars, sectors, and strategic intensity.

Related reading: Concentration 2026 · H-NIPO research · Q3 chokepoint update · August toolkit update.