A few days before Christmas, Donald Trump acknowledged that insurance subsidies were poised to end for tens of millions of Americans, but the president suggested that he had some ideas about addressing the underlying issue. In fact, the Republican announced his belief that private insurance companies’ profits are beyond what they’re “entitled” to.
He went on to say that he would soon tell private insurers to lower prices “way, way down,” before adding that he also expects his administration to “have a certain control over the drug companies.”
There’s no reason to assume that the White House will follow through on any of this, or that it even has the legal authority to try. But the circumstances were unusual: While Republican Party orthodoxy has emphasized the free market for generations, Americans saw a GOP president declare his intention to dictate to private companies what they should charge and how much they should make.
As 2026 gets underway, Trump is applying this same perspective to other businesses. The New York Times reported:
Ahead of a scheduled signing of executive orders [on Wednesday afternoon], President Trump said that he would move to cut pay for the executives in the defense industry, and ban stock buybacks and the issuing of dividends for those companies. It is unclear how that could be enforced, and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for details.
Specifically, the Republican said by way of his social media platform that he envisions what would be effectively a salary cap for executives at defense contractors: “No Executive should be allowed to make in excess of $5 Million Dollars” unless they make the changes to production plants that Trump wants to see.
That was followed by a related message specifically targeting Raytheon, a private company that makes missiles and bombs, which the president said he expects to invest more of its profits in production.
While there’s ample room for conversation about the merits of such demands, let’s not miss the forest for the trees: That he’s even making these demands reflects an approach to capitalism that Republicans have fundamentally rejected in the recent past.
What’s more, it keeps happening. The Wall Street Journal’s Greg Ip published a provocative analysis on this last summer:
A generation ago conventional wisdom held that as China liberalized, its economy would come to resemble America’s. Instead, capitalism in America is starting to look like China. Recent examples include President Trump’s demand that Intel’s chief executive resign; the 15% of certain chip sales to China that Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices will share with Washington; the ‘golden share’ Washington will get in U.S. Steel as a condition of Nippon Steel’s takeover; and the $1.5 trillion of promised investment from trading partners Trump plans to personally direct.
Ip’s report added that it would be wrong to characterize this as “socialism,” because it more closely resembles “state capitalism, a hybrid between socialism and capitalism in which the state guides the decisions of nominally private enterprises.”
The Journal published a related analysis around the same time, noting that the American president “has no qualms about acting as the micromanager in chief,” which includes “telling corporate bosses how to run their companies.”
The president calling for the ouster of Intel’s CEO because of something he saw on Fox Business was certainly a dramatic example, but as the article noted, it was part of a pattern. “Trump has told Detroit carmakers not to raise prices and demanded Walmart ‘eat the tariffs.’ He has pressured the Washington Commanders football team to change its name and wants Coca-Cola to use cane sugar instead of corn syrup.”
It might be tempting to see this as evidence of the Republican’s populism, but that’s not quite right: Trump isn’t challenging corporations and executives on behalf of workers, he’s doing so on behalf of his own whims and quest for power. (In fact, as he tries to exert influence over the private sector, the White House is making life harder, not better, for workers.)
During the 2024 race, when many business leaders lined up behind the GOP ticket, they likely thought Republican rule would mean corporate tax breaks and fewer regulations. And while those assumptions have proved correct (the White House has delivered corporate tax breaks and freed polluters from regulatory burdens), those same business leaders have also ended up with more than they probably bargained for. Indeed, the very idea that Trump is a pro-business president is increasingly preposterous. As he tries to dictate to America’s private sector, the Republican is also imposing erratic policies on trade tariffs and immigration that are bad for employers. The incumbent president has also launched an aggressive campaign to undermine public confidence in the Federal Reserve; told businesses to accept lower profit margins; targeted the nation’s system of higher education, which employers rely on to train their workforce; demanded that employers alter their hiring practices to reflect Trump’s contempt for diversity of all kinds; and has even made it more difficult to rely on the integrity of government data, which businesses rely on for decision-making. All the while, instead of addressing the concerns of business leaders, he’s publicly mocked them. A couple of weeks before Election Day 2024, The New York Times’ editorial board published a memorable piece with a straightforward headline: “American Business Cannot Afford to Risk Another Trump Presidency.” The editors all but pleaded with private sector leaders to recognize the looming dangers of a second term for Trump. “Voting on narrow policy concerns would reflect a catastrophically nearsighted view of the interests of American business,” they wrote, adding that business owners should be “afraid of the consequences if he prevails.” More than a year later, as the president intervenes in private businesses in ways that defy modern American norms, those warnings appear prescient in retrospect. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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