Unlike any leader of any free-market economy around the world, President Trump has seized control of private enterprise’s strategic decision-making and investment policies while invading corporate board rooms so that he may dictate leadership staffing, punish corporate critics, and demand public compliance with his political agenda. This is far more dangerous to capitalism than a city-run grocery store.
Many free-market economists and business leaders who have long worshipped the free-market ideals of Adam Smith, Friedrich Hayek, Ayn Rand, and Milton Friedman should be aware that their idols would be rolling in their graves right now, as rather than pursue standard laissez-faire conservative economic policies, MAGA has gone Marxist and even, increasingly, Maoist.
Marxism and Maoism were both, of course, expressions of the communist theory that spilled forth from Karl Marx’s pen in the 19th century, brought to life in the brutal one-party states of the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China under its leader Mao Zedong, before it evolved into “capitalism with Chinese characteristics” starting in the 1970s, around the time of President Richard Nixon’s fateful visit to Beijing.
The essence of market capitalism is that owners—shareholders and the management they appoint share in the profits. These deals give share of profits to government in return for favors. Friedman said that federal government should never own anything—that it should not run a surplus because it would have funds to invest in the private sector. What strategic decision-making rights would the government have in such deals, then?
The political right used to complain about the “political correctness of the left.” Similarly, Trump’s history of cracking down on businesses for exercising their freedom of expression resembles the purges of Maoist China far more than American democratic norms.
Across each of these five dimensions, one can’t help but think MAGA is going Marxist or full Maoist. Adam Smith’s salute to the “invisible hand” of free markets in favor of the fist of government appears to be losing out in the Trump administration. as these unprecedented policies with no parallel in American history share much more in common with Karl Marx and Mao Zedong than Adam Smith and Ayn Rand. Many now wonder why the Business Roundtable remains missing in action, insulating itself with turgid knowledge, subtracting white papers and passive forums, piously genuflecting to President Trump’s assaults on free-market capitalism that make New York’s Mamdani look like John D. Rockefeller.
The authors would like to thank Steven Tian and Stephen Henriques from the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute for their research.
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