The Trump Administration Wants to Follow Communist China and Give Government Part Ownership of Defense Companies
The right wants us to believe that Trump is a champion of free markets. Instead, he is increasingly adopting a Chinese model of partial state ownership and domination of private enterprises. To complete that model, all we need is state ownership of defense contractors—which is exactly what Trump’s people are proposing.
CNBC reports:
Top officials at the Pentagon are “thinking about” whether the U.S. should acquire equity stakes in leading defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Tuesday. The Cabinet secretary, in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” revealed the Defense Department’s interest in taking those stakes days after the U.S. government acquired 10% of Intel stock in a roughly $9 billion deal. …
Lockheed, which makes most of its revenue from federal contracts, is “basically an arm of the U.S. government,” he said. …
Trump’s move to take ownership of a chunk of Intel, an embattled chipmaker, is a major escalation in his efforts to achieve his economic goals by exerting more and more government control over the private economy.
Trump said Monday that he would make similar deals “all day long.”
President Eisenhower famously warned about a “military-industrial complex” in which decisions about what defense systems to buy would not be made based on the best interests of the country but on cozy ties between the government and contractors. Trump’s scheme would make that problem far, far worse.
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