TJ Walker’s YouTube commentary argues that the Trump administration is pursuing a form of state-run capitalism by acquiring ownership stakes or options in multiple private companies. He cites reporting that the administration committed over $10 billion across at least nine companies (examples: Intel, MP Materials, Lithium Americas, Trilogy Metals, Vulcan Elements, Westinghouse, U.S. Steel) and warns this amounts to creeping socialism and cronyism, diverging from free-market conservative principles.
Trump's quiet march towards state run capitalism. President Trump loves to rail against socialism, but his own administration is quietly buying chunks of private industry. According to the New York Times, the Trump team has already committed more than $10 billion in taxpayer money for ownership stakes or options in at least nine companies, most of which you haven't heard heard of. It's, it's including intel, which you probably have heard of. MP Materials, Lithium, Americas, Trilogy Metals, Vulcan Elements, Westinghouse, and even a golden share in U S Steel that gives Washington veto power over key decisions. Former Biden official Aaron Bartnik warns that without a clear strategy, this could just devolve to arbitrary deals that favor friends or, or disfavor foes. We see that risk when the administration makes the Commerce Department the largest intel shareholder and then Trump personally buys up millions of dollars of debt for some of these companies. Analyst William Reinsch says Biden's team was slow and meticulous, while Trump seems to invest by whim. That's not free market conservatism, that's creeping state ownership with a side of cronyism. What's the real message here? For decades, American conservatives have warned us that we are in danger of creeping socialism taking over the U.S. economy. And it turns out they were right. But what they didn't factor in, it was done from the inside. One of their own. This Republican, ostensibly conservative administration is socializing company after company after company. It's not just intel, it's not just U.S. steel. It is a dozen companies now where this administration says, hey, we want a piece of you, you better give it to us. This is socialism and it doesn't end well. Okay, call me too conservative if you like. I happen to believe in free market capitalism where some things are socialized like roads, like police service, like national defense, like education. In fact, all strong economies do in fact socialize those things. What they don't do is just go taking pieces of all sorts of private sector companies because they can. And that's essentially what this socialistic administration has done. You know, there's been a lot of talk about the problem of rising socialism in America. Everyone's looking at the wrong place. You have a partisan media that says, oh, here's New York City, here is a guy running as a democratic socialist. So let's, let's pull out our hair. If you have hair and become hysterical about someone who's using socialism in his name, Zorhan Mandani, let's go crazy about that and talk about how the sky is falling and it's the end of the world, when in fact he has no power to take over private sector companies. Meanwhile, we have someone who purports to be this great private sector businessman, Donald Trump, socializing industry after industry after industry, company after company. Again, it's not just intel, it's MP Materials, it's Lithium Americas, it's Trilogy Metals, it's Vulcan Elements, It's Westinghouse, it's U.S. steel. Now, does he have a reason? Sure. Guess what? All socialistic countries always have a reason. Fidel Castro always had a reason for socializing companies, private sector companies. Ultimately, it comes down to because I can. Now Trump is saying I have to do this because it's in the national interests, it's national security interests. We need these for weapons, et cetera. Well, guess what? If you like what Trump is doing and you like him and you voted for him, fine. But I want you to imagine a time when there's somebody of another party in the White House who says it's in the national interest that I, for example, let in every single foreigner who has a bachelor's degree or a PhD in any science field, any mathematics field. Because I think it's in the national interest that we have the top brains so that we can make the top weapons and have the strongest economy. If you're going to have this loosey goosey definition of what's in the national interest and what's for national security, there is in fact, nothing stopping some other administration from saying, well, we have to let every single foreigner in the entire world instant citizenship in America. Now, you may say that wouldn't be fair to our own workers, our own college grads. Well, a lot of people don't think it's fair. Now, when certain industries get big government stakes government money, and others don't. So look, there's no such thing as a 100% absolute purist when it comes to everything has to be in the free market. Because then you couldn't have stop signs and you couldn't get to work. You wouldn't have roads, so you couldn't build businesses. So let's not kid ourselves. Nobody is a 100% devoted free market for everything, all the time. It doesn't exist. Unless you count Libya, where there's a failed state and you can literally buy slaves in the open market. If that's what you want, be my guest. I don't think that's what most Americans or most people in prosperity as nations want. So it's always a question of you want most of the economy in the hands of the private sector and then there's certain slivers of it where it just makes sense to have, for example, public schools as opposed to every single person trying to go to a private school. But this is going too far. And what's happening is the Trump administration is getting a pass because you have so called liberal media, establishment media so busy attacking Trump on other bigger crises. We don't have time for this. We have so many so called conservatives and new media, right wing media, libertarian media, they're like, oh, we would love to attack Biden if he'd done this. But since Trump is our guy, he can go ahead and socialize huge swaths of the American private sector and we're just going to be quiet, we're going to keep our mouth shut because he's on our team. I'm not playing that game. I'm here for you today and every day as a sane, sensible centrist and I'm going to call it like I see it.
