Drawing on the ideas of mercantilism, he believed state intervention was needed to secure the largest part of limited resources.
The French were beginning to colonize parts of North America, but did not have permanent settlements like the Spanish and British colonies.
Like all other colonies, French influence in the New World led to problems with the natives: war for control of the fur trade and novel diseases killed off large portions of First Nations tribes.
He believed that in order to increase French power it would be essential to grow France's share of international trade and reduce the commercial hegemony of the Dutch.
To guarantee the standard of workmanship, he made regulations for every sort of manufacture and imposed fines and pillory for counterfeiting and shortcomings He encouraged the formation of companies dedicated to building ships and attempted to obtain monopolies for French commerce abroad through the formation of trading companies.
They next enforced quality standards on production and trade, which meant that the French economy was frozen at the level of the early or mid-17th century.
He created a formidable system of inspection, marks and measurements to be able to identify all those who were straying from the detailed list of state regulations.
As a result of the strictly enforced mercantilism and French absolutism, France was put out of the running as a leading nation in industrial or economic growth.
Colonies can be planted and nurtured, home manufacturing improved in quality, internal transportation strengthened, the shipping industry expanded and the idle forced to work.
The universal rule according to Colbert is to control the economy and the fiscal system so that a sufficient quantity of cash will circulate in every corner of the country, giving all French the opportunity to make profits and pay taxes.
[2] Since World War II, high-tech Colbertism has been the historic form used for the intervention of a sovereign nation state, armed with a monopoly of the general interest, in the "industries of the future".
This policy was considered a success by the French Development Party, as France experienced a tremendous growth in the post war years and transformed itself into an industrial powerhouse.
It will provide future national champions with grants, secure markets through procurement policies and will prevent foreign entry.
Leaving aside the convenient abstraction of the state, the "Grand Project" takes off only when a homogeneous elite is capable of mobilizing a workforce committed to the purposes of the state-entrepreneur and of national independence.
This can only be fruitful when the State promotes aggressive protectionism, finances the early stages of industrial development, transfers the results of public research, allows the depreciation of investment over a long period, provides certain markets through public procurement and encourages development by putting the State's powers at the service of the national champion.
The five pillars, which the success of the grand plan can be obtained are: technical innovation, emergence of new patterns of consumption, dynamic protectionism, the risk of a new industrial participant and socio-political engineering.