Posted on July 31, 2025

 

 

Orange Man Red

The socialist policies of Donald J. Trump

by

Daniel Clark

 

 

Democrats are in a panic over the rise of stridently socialist mayoral candidates in New York and Minneapolis, but theirs is not the only party that ought to be concerned. The Republicans may not have the same public relations problem as the unapologetic pinkos across the aisle, but they, too, have been infected with a strain of socialism, personified by President Donald Trump.

For all of his rhetorical railing against socialism, Trump has pursued policies that are often unfriendly to free enterprise, while involving the federal government in areas of American life upon which it should never encroach. For example, he negotiated for himself and future presidents a "golden share" of U.S. Steel as a condition of allowing Nippon Steel to purchase it. The golden share is a special share of stock that carries with it a majority of the voting rights among the stockholders. Thus, the Nippon deal has essentially ceded to the president veto power over such basic corporate decisions as changes in salary structure, the closing and moving of plants, and the sourcing of raw materials. That's every bit as un-American as it sounds. The golden share model is used most commonly by countries that want to privatize the ownership of businesses without giving up governmental control, the most recognizable example being Volkswagen in postwar Germany. If liberals who like to call Trump a fascist had any idea what the word meant, they would apply it here.

Another peculiar Trump administration business arrangement is that the Defense Department has bought $400 million worth of shares in MP Materials, a Las Vegas-based company that produces rare earth metals. Of course, our military needs rare earths, but why not simply sign an agreement to purchase the materials, instead of taking a 15 percent stake in the company? Is the Pentagon trying to beat the Red Chinese at their own game?

When the Trump administration is not taking partial ownership of private companies, it nonetheless has a penchant for dictating to them how they must conduct their businesses. When President Barack Obama sent his wife around to bully food producers into reducing their use of sodium, Republicans understood that to be a heavy-handed power grab, because when the government negotiates with private citizens about how they may do business, the resulting agreement is never voluntary. Three presidential terms later, many of them are cheering on HHS Secretary RFK Jr., as he demands that the makers of candies and breakfast cereals remove the artificial coloring from their products. During the Trump administration, it is now the GOP that decries "big food" profiteers, and argues that we need the kind of supposedly benevolent government intervention that they have in Europe and Canada.

This past May, the CEO of Mattel criticized Trump's tariffs and said that they would result in higher toy prices. Trump responded by threatening to ensure that Mattel "won't sell one toy in the United States," by imposing a 100 percent tariff specifically on merchandise from that company. It should go without saying that there is no constitutional provision that allows the president to arbitrarily inflict punitive taxation on the prospective customers of a businessman who offends him, but if the Republican majority in Congress cared about that, it would have taken away his unconstitutional power to levy tariffs months ago.

After the chief financial officer of Walmart explained the need to pass the cost of the tariffs along to its customers, Trump fired off a social media post demanding that the retail chain "'EAT THE TARIFFS,' and not charge valued customers ANYTHING," before adding ominously, "I'll be watching." In what kind of a country does the president dictate what a store may charge for its wares? Furthermore, the belief that Walmart can indefinitely absorb the cost of the tariffs is rooted in a left-wing anti-capitalist caricature, which assumes that businesses are hoarding huge reserves of wealth that they don't really need for anything. Indeed, it seems cruel of the retailers to charge their customers more for their merchandise if one believes they keep gigantic bags of money in the back room, just for rolling around in while laughing diabolically, as they are presumably wont to do.

Though he continues to insist that American consumers don't pay his tariffs, Trump recently floated the idea of tariff rebate checks. How can there be a rebate if there has been no bate? Republican senator Josh Hawley of Missouri didn't ask before obediently introducing a bill to send out tariff rebate checks of $600 per family member. The distribution of tariff payments, on the other hand, is not so unform, with purchasers of new houses, new cars and other big-ticket items paying a disproportionate percentage. The rebates, then, would be a redistributionist program, taking large sums of money from upper income earners, and dispersing them more equitably.

If that sounds uncharacteristic of the Trump administration, it shouldn't. Embedded in his "Big, Byoo-dee-full Bill" is a new entitlement he has wittily named Trump Accounts, which are government-administered savings accounts for newborns. When each account is created, it will receive $1,000 in seed money from the already empty federal coffers. That's an abomination in itself, but we can already guess that both the amount and frequency of the taxpayer contributions, as well as the pool of eligible recipients, will only expand over time. It's not hard to imagine this program being morphed one day into a mechanism for providing a universal basic income.

The aim of the Trump Accounts is to encourage Americans to have larger families, but what kind of government sees such a thing as its responsibility? The same kind that presumes a mandate to Make America Healthy Again, that's what. It's the kind that sees its citizens as its own managerial problems, rather than as free individuals to whom the government is theoretically subordinate.

As the Democrats have moved farther to the left, Trump has led the Republicans to occupy the spot they have vacated. Whereas a prominent Democrat wants to create government-owned grocery stores, our Republican president only wants to tell store owners what prices they may charge, and food producers what ingredients they must use in their products. It will probably be at least another decade before his party has gotten as far gone down the road to tyranny as the opposition is right now.

That's a heck of a campaign theme to have to run on.

 

 

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