By Jim Geraghty
Wednesday, August 13, 2025
Noah Rothman, John Puri, and Andrew Stuttaford have already raked the Trump
administration over the coals for its senseless, self-defeating decision to
allow Nvidia and AMD to sell advanced chips to Chinese companies, as long as 15
percent of the money from those sales goes to the federal government.
I’d just add that this comes after the U.S. government
claimed for itself a “golden share” in the stock and management decisions of
U.S. Steel, and the U.S. Department of Defense is using $400 million in taxpayer money to purchase a 15 percent
stake in MP Materials and became the company’s largest shareholder. The New
York Times argues, with considerable justification, that since taking
office, Trump has decided that he runs the American semiconductor
industry:
In just eight months, Mr. Trump
has made himself the biggest decision maker for one of the world’s most
economically and strategically important industries, which makes key components
for everything from giant A.I. systems to military weapons. And he has turned
the careful planning of companies historically led by engineers into a game of
insider politics.
John accurately labels this worsening habit
“state-directed capitalism,” and it comes from an administration that is going
to spend the rest of its time in office denouncing the socialism of Bernie
Sanders and the communism of Zohran Mamdani. (President Trump has already echoed Sanders in his belief
that American consumers have too many choices and don’t need to buy as many
dolls and other toys.) This administration and the current crop of Republicans
are the most statist defenders of the free market ever.
I remember Salon once absurdly contending that
Americans live in “the Koch brothers’ libertarian utopia.” A libertarian
utopia! We can’t even get a Republican president to stop telling corporate
boards what to do.
No comments:
Post a Comment