Is President Donald Trump a socialist in disguise?

Trump made his name in the private sector as a dealmaker, and so my worry has long been that he will try to make too many deals, specifically here at home with American companies. Sure enough, that’s exactly what he has been doing, effectively turning major U.S. businesses into arms of the government.

My first big wave of anxiety came in August, when Trump announced that the federal government would be taking 10 percent of Intel, the microchip company, in return for a previously approved subsidy. Needless to say, this was done without any congressional stamp of approval.

Viewed as a stand-alone incident, the Intel deal could be dismissed as unimportant. There are state-owned or partially state-owned companies around the world, after all, and some are more efficient than others.

Unfortunately, this is not a one-off. The federal government also decided to take a 15 percent share in MP Materials, a company that mines rare-earth minerals that are essential for everything from smartphones to guided missiles. You might think that is essential for America’s national security, because China has such a large presence in that sector and the military applications of these rare-earth minerals are many.

Just last week, however, the Trump administration announced it would be taking a 5 percent stake in two different lithium mining ventures. The good news is that major lithium deposits are being discovered around the world, making this kind of U.S. government involvement unnecessary for national security reasons. The bad news is that our government still is treating this as a national emergency.

The word socialism is overused in political debate, but during his 10 months in office, Trump has certainly put us on the path toward it.

The Trump administration has also offered Nvidia the right to sell high-quality artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China, previously denied under law because the U.S. generally isn’t interested in helping Chinese AI get better. In exchange, the U.S. government would get a cut of those transactions to the tune of about 15 percent. In that case, it is not obvious the deal will hold up in the courts because it may violate the Export Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Of course, it does not end there. Once deals like this are being made and the safeguards protecting private business from government control are done away with, we can only expect more of them.

Last week, the Trump administration announced an arrangement in which Pfizer would cut pharmaceutical prices in return for some tariff relief. Reuters has reported that the Trump administration is now planning various kinds of deals with up to 30 industries.

To make sure the new deals stick, there is a plan in the works to formalize them and make it so this is how the U.S. government deals with businesses going forward. To that end, the Trump administration wishes to greatly expand the financing and authority of what was previously a minor institution, namely the International Development Finance Corporation (DFC).

The DFC was created in 2018 to help finance projects in developing nations. But under the proposed expansion, it would establish an equity fund to cement federal government ownership of key parts of American industry. This means that our federal government would move away from its longstanding and beneficial stance of letting private ownership stay private.

The word socialism is overused in political debate, but during his 10 months in office, Trump has certainly put us on the path toward it. And in case you’re wondering, this is a bad thing: American business has been world-beating for a long time now, in large part because we avoid these sorts of public-private arrangements, which are common in faltering European economies. A dose of government ownership and the associated politicization are not what American industry and innovation need.

There’s a reason we have a private sector to begin with, which is that market realities force companies to efficiently deliver good products at a reasonable price, or else go out of business due to competition.

Now think of everything you know about the federal government and how it operates. Do you observe our own government being successful in cutting costs? Keeping its debt and finances in line? Enforcing standards of accountability? It is laughable to even pose such questions. So given those realities, why should government ownership of private corporations be such a good idea?

A dose of government ownership and the associated politicization are not what American industry and innovation need.

To an outsider, the government owning 10 percent of a company might sound like small potatoes. But, typically, a 10-percent share is significant enough and concentrated enough to give that shareholder a large and often decisive voice.

That is all the more true when the holder of the 10 percent is the regulator, taxer, and law enforcer—and holds the bully pulpit of the presidency. In most cases, holding just a tiny share of a large company means the government could exercise effective control over it.

I worry all the more because Trump has not hesitated to use both stick and carrot to induce business leaders to either support him or at least to speak nicely of him in public. This of course includes his repeated threats to use the Federal Communications Commission against those who criticize him, which resulted in ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s removal from the airwaves.

Disney quickly decided to bring Kimmel back. But at the risk of giving Trump more bad ideas, the outcome would likely have been different if the federal government owned a sizable chunk of that entertainment giant. If the federal government owns 10 percent of you or is doing major deals with you, the pressure to comply and fall in line will be exceptionally powerful. And the role of the DFC could be expanded further yet, which would corrupt political discourse all the more.

I went back and I checked the 1944 book As We Go Marching, written by the American conservative John T. Flynn. Writing in the aftermath of the New Deal, Flynn predicted that America was headed toward a mix of socialism and fascism, due to the growing involvement of the government in the economy.

It turned out Flynn was wrong, and his worst fears came to naught. But it is fascinating to go back and see what he thought the denouement would consist of. He wrote that this American fascism would involve “the comprehensive integration of government and private finances, under which investment is directed and regimented by the government, so that while ownership is private and production is carried on by private owners there is a type of socialization of investment.”

Flynn continued: “By this means the state, which by law and by regulation can exercise a powerful control over industry, can enormously expand and complete that control by assuming the role of banker and partner.”

I submit that Trump is on the verge of (finally) proving Flynn correct.

A parting question: What do the Republicans expect will happen the next time the Democratic Party assumes power? Will the Democrats use their equity shares to enforce more DEI? Pass new green energy requirements? Shift contracts toward blue states? Penalize right-leaning CEOs—or push them to shut up?

The rejoinder from the right is that this is how Democrats already behave, and there’s some truth to that. But empowering the government further in these areas is a terrible remedy. That is bound to make things worse, subjecting all sorts of companies to rule by federal fiat. That won’t just be bad for these companies and their ability to compete. It will also prove catastrophic for freedom of speech.

The GOP is traditionally the party that resists this kind of federal overreach into the private sector. Now that it has abandoned that principle, it also has established a precedent for a future left-wing government to take control of America’s most powerful companies. I predict that Republicans will not enjoy the final result.