Building on Part I, we’ll start Part II of this series by recycling this 2025 discussion I had with John Stossel.

When sharing that video last year, I included a list of companies that Trump had partly nationalized.

I was horrified that five corporations now were now directly under the thumb of politicians.

Government ownership of companies, I wrote, was a recipe for “taxpayer bailouts” and “more Washington corruption.”

Well, things have gone from bad to worse. Far worse. Here’s an updated (but still not complete!) list, courtesy of Scott Lincicome.

I’m not the only one distressed by GOP socialism.

Here are some excerpts from Veronique de Rugy’s column earlier this month in Reason.

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) released their platform last month, and let’s give them credit for candor. They want public ownership of large corporations… Conservatives read that document and saw the future they have been warning American voters about: the government seizing the commanding heights of the economy and becoming owner rather than referee. Their alarm is warranted. The socialist program would be a catastrophe. So, here’s an awkward question: Why is a Republican administration quietly doing the public ownership of businesses part on its own? …By a Cato Institute count, …the federal corporate portfolio to roughly 30 firms. …Federal ownership of private companies has become routine, and it is happening on the right even as members busily point fingers at the left for its socialism. …Socialism’s defining move is to put ownership and decision making in the same collective hands. A government equity stake does exactly that. Washington already regulates these firms, buys from them, and subsidizes them. Now, it owns pieces of them. …The economics of government ownership of company shares are worse than the politics. A government does not allocate capital to its highest-valued use; it allocates capital to its most politically valued use.

Here are passages from an appropriately sarcastic Washington Post column last year by Jim Geraghty.

Remember, Republicans: It’s important that we stop Zohran Mamdani… The man is a socialist! …It’s a good thing we have President Donald Trump and his administration to stop the spread of Mamdani’s socialist agenda. Instead of having the government take greater control of private companies the way Mamdani wants, the administration is having the government take greater control of private companies the way Trump wants. …Once upon a time, Republicans detested the idea of using taxpayer money to bail out a troubled company such as Intel. …remember, Republicans: We’ve got to stop Mamdani because he’s a socialist — because the last thing we need is someone in power calling for even greater government intervention in the private sector. People might start to get ideas.

And here’s some of what Brett Stephens wrote for the New York Times on the same day.

Ask an American conservative what makes America great, and…he might have said that, among other virtues, it’s a country in which the government stays out of the business of getting in business. Yes, there are exceptions — Fannie Mae and Amtrak come to mind — but their record of mismanagement and mediocrity would prove the conservative’s point. …But American conservatism under President Trump is changing into something unrecognizable, at least to those of us (silly us!) who thought the movement had guiding principles… If a Democratic president did this…, Republicans would call it a political shakedown, an assault on capitalism, a loser for taxpayers. They’d be right. …Republicans now cheering Trump…should at least wonder what the consequences for America’s economic freedom and competitiveness will be once he makes America statist again.

Last but not least, here are some excerpts from a column that John Puri wrote in June for National Review.

Federal stakes also threaten untold economic distortions. Once the government takes a financial interest in a particular company, the interventionism never ends there. Officials use the state’s power to privilege their investments over other firms, supplanting the market’s role in steering wealth and opportunity. …Through such favoritism, Trump’s investment picks distort the flow of capital. Government stakes are intended to “crowd in” private investment, thereby diverting resources from more intrinsically promising businesses that otherwise would have received that funding. Intel’s share price has skyrocketed since its deal with Trump, despite persistently poor fundamentals — a telltale sign of capital misallocation. Positive returns for taxpayers often fail to translate into success for the nation. Government-owned companies may well see their valuations jump as investors seek the security of state backing, but that only means they are eating up resources that could have gone to more productive ventures. It’s the same model that has faltered in China — government directing capital to state-owned and politically favored enterprises — with misallocation costing the country trillions of dollars in missed economic output.

I agree with all the concerns expressed in these four columns.

All I need to add is that Trump is creating a horrible precedent, as captured by this cartoon I created using ChatGPT.

Just imagine the damage a future leftist president could do (like AOC’s Green New Deal) now that Trump has paved the way.

Might make the damage of Trump’s protectionism look trivial by comparison.