America has always prided itself on not being a socialist nation. But President Donald Trump now hails a new “golden age” — sold with the optimism of Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America” but built on Washington’s intrusion into corporate ownership. The federal government already imposes one of the world’s most progressive tax systems, runs health care, subsidizes education, guarantees pensions, and now wields voting powers in corporate boardrooms. When bureaucrats become shareholders, it is not a sign of national strength, but of institutional failure.
Indeed, a union of republics once placed government at the very center of its economy. Born from revolution in 1917, it promised freedom of speech, but what followed was no freedom — only years of forced labor in the gulag archipelago. Though blessed with fertile land and an agricultural heritage, it presided over the starvation of 7 to 10 million people in Ukraine. Walls across Eastern Europe were erected not to keep foreigners out, but to ensure its own population could not leave. Even its greatest feats of science collapsed under the weight of mismanagement. Chernobyl’s nuclear reactor, meant to showcase progress, instead exposed the catastrophic costs and flaws of central planning, scarring land and lives for generations. To this day, the USSR remains the clearest example of what happens when the government tries to command the economy. Its collapse in 1991 marked the end of a 74-year socialist experiment — one that failed, and need not be repeated.
As time unfolds, the US federal government’s tentacles burrow ever-deeper into the economy. In the 2008 crisis, banks deemed “too big to fail” received a government bailout. The following year, automobile firms GM and Chrysler were saved from bankruptcy. When the Treasury exited GM in 2013, taxpayers were left with a loss of more than $10 billion. Ten years later, the federal government forbade Nippon Steel to acquire US Steel, in a merger they both desired. Instead, the government settled for Nippon Steel to invest in US Steel alongside its own direct ownership of the firm via a “golden share.” Just this past week, the US federal government announced its 10 percent stake in Intel, the struggling US semiconductor giant. On top of the $7 billion Intel had already received from the 2024 CHIPS Act, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo called Intel “America’s champion semiconductor company.”
The bipartisan obsession with all things “made in America” has been met with staunch support on both sides of the aisle. The political left and right have formed a horseshoe, both embracing government intervention as the way forward. Senator Bernie Sanders supports the current US administration in its pursuit of a stake in Intel: “if microchip companies make a profit from the generous grants they receive from the federal government, the taxpayers of America have a right to a reasonable return on that investment.” Across the now-invisible partisan aisle, President Donald Trump states, “I negotiated this Deal with Lip-Bu Tan, the Highly Respected Chief Executive Officer of the Company. The United States paid nothing for these Shares, and the Shares are now valued at approximately $11 Billion Dollars. This is a great Deal for America and, also, a great Deal for INTEL.”
The irony is striking: a government $37 trillion in debt cannot balance its own books, yet plays venture capitalist with taxpayer money. Furthermore, if Intel was a true champion it would not need the full weight of the US government for support in an industry where it is clearly lagging behind its competition, Nvidia, the most valuable company in the world. The decision should not be how much to intervene in these companies, or the economy, but to not intervene at all.
Once upon a time, Donald Trump was voted to drain the swamp and cast out corruption. Transplanting swamp creatures from Washington into corporate boardrooms does not end corruption, but it entrenches it. Acting on privileged information, the so-called “Rich Men North of Richmond,” our elected politicians, are growing richer by the year.
“More than 20 members made almost double the S&P 500 average gain of 24.9 percent last year,” The Independent reported. “The top five performers — Rep. David Rouzer (R-NC), Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Roger Williams (R-TX), Morgan McGarvey (D-KY) — increased the value of their portfolio…by more than 100 percent.”
If this is how politicians trade when they only regulate, imagine what happens when Commerce officials hand politicians access to shareholders’ meetings. In addition to this, Pew Research Center highlights that only 20 percent of Americans trust the federal government. Setting money and trust aside, government officials are already calling for the resignation of the CEO of Intel. Interestingly enough, just across the Pacific Ocean, the Chinese Communist Party, who has a stake in Alibaba, the fourth largest firm in China, had its CEO, China’s richest man, Jack Ma disappear for five years. Does the future Intel CEO need to wonder whether criticizing Washington could one day carry similar risks?
The federal government is not a venture capitalist that can afford to invest with borrowed dollars, and importing Washington politics to boardrooms will not make American firms competitive again. History teaches that when states place themselves at the center of economies, the result is coercion, corruption, and collapse. America’s strength has always been its entrepreneurs, not its politicians. As Ludwig von Mises warned in his 1944 Bureaucracy, “government is not a profit-seeking enterprise. The conduct of its affairs cannot be checked by profit-and-loss statements. Its achievement cannot be valued in terms of money.” When politicians direct capital, they do so without accountability to market signals, and the result is wasted resources. If this is truly the “golden age” the President claims, it looks far more like a Gilded Age — glittering on the surface, hollow beneath — just as Mark Twain warned more than a century ago. America doesn’t need a gilded age of government inside boardrooms; it needs a renewed age of independent entrepreneurship.