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When L'tat C'est Trump, the U.S. Goes in for State Capitalism
OK—who’s the dangerous radical pushing the state to take over private enterprise here? Who’s aping the Chinese Communist policy of having the government own or control major business entities?
Zohran Mamdani? He’s called for more consumer-friendly regulation of some New York City markets (rental housing in particular), and proposed setting up a handful of city-run grocery stores, but he hasn’t advocated seizing big corporations or banks, though New York is lousy with them.
On the other hand, there’s Donald Trump. His approval of Nippon Steel’s purchase of U.S. Steel was conditioned on giving the government a golden share through which the government—that is, Trump—could control the company’s policies and conduct. His decision to let chipmakers Nvidia and AMD sell their H20 chips to China, despite the risks that poses to U.S. national security, was conditioned on their having to pay our government 15 percent of the revenues they made from those sales, as my colleague David Dayen has noted. He has told Intel to fire its CEO, then walked that back when the CEO visited the White House and apparently promised, said Trump, to “bring suggestions to me.” On Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump was now considering having the government take a financial stake in the company. And he’s also been strong-arming major law firms to work pro bono for causes he promotes.
To be sure, there have been times in our history when the government has involved itself directly in businesses’ affairs and taken temporary stakes in them, but until now, that’s always been during particular and time-limited emergencies. When the domestic auto industry faced the prospect of collapse in the wake of the 2008 financial crash, the government took a temporary stake in both General Motors and Chrysler in return for bailing them out. While also bailing out the largest banks, however, it did not take a stake in them. And while the Biden administration boosted the strategically important green-energy industry with tax credits, it took no stake in those companies.
Zohran Mamdani? He’s called for more consumer-friendly regulation of some New York City markets (rental housing in particular), and proposed setting up a handful of city-run grocery stores, but he hasn’t advocated seizing big corporations or banks, though New York is lousy with them.
On the other hand, there’s Donald Trump. His approval of Nippon Steel’s purchase of U.S. Steel was conditioned on giving the government a golden share through which the government—that is, Trump—could control the company’s policies and conduct. His decision to let chipmakers Nvidia and AMD sell their H20 chips to China, despite the risks that poses to U.S. national security, was conditioned on their having to pay our government 15 percent of the revenues they made from those sales, as my colleague David Dayen has noted. He has told Intel to fire its CEO, then walked that back when the CEO visited the White House and apparently promised, said Trump, to “bring suggestions to me.” On Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump was now considering having the government take a financial stake in the company. And he’s also been strong-arming major law firms to work pro bono for causes he promotes.
To be sure, there have been times in our history when the government has involved itself directly in businesses’ affairs and taken temporary stakes in them, but until now, that’s always been during particular and time-limited emergencies. When the domestic auto industry faced the prospect of collapse in the wake of the 2008 financial crash, the government took a temporary stake in both General Motors and Chrysler in return for bailing them out. While also bailing out the largest banks, however, it did not take a stake in them. And while the Biden administration boosted the strategically important green-energy industry with tax credits, it took no stake in those companies.
https://prospect.org/economy/2025-08-18-when-letat-cest-trump-us-goes-in-for-state-capitalism/]
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