Originally published on Substack. 

When a Republican president starts acting like a New York City socialist, it’s time to say the quiet part out loud: Industrial policy has officially infected both political parties.
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The Wall Street Journal reports that the Trump administration plans to take an equity stake in a semiconductor startup founded by Intel’s former CEO should alarm anyone who still believes capitalism means private risk and private reward.

The deal—made through the government’s CHIPS Act slush fund passed during the Biden years—reads less like a market transaction and more like Washington’s latest attempt to play venture capitalist with other people’s money.

And let’s be clear: When government takes equity in a private company, that isn’t capitalism. That’s corporate socialism.
In fact, it’s precisely the kind of policy you’d expect from NYC Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani—not a Republican president.
But here we are.

When Government Takes an Equity Stake, It’s Not “America First”—It’s Government First

This chip startup—led by a respected former Intel CEO—may well be brilliant. It might innovate, scale, and help rebuild domestic semiconductor capacity.

That’s not the point.

The point is what government is doing:

• picking a firm
• choosing a technology
• subsidizing the risk
• absorbing potential losses
• sharing in theoretical profits
• and distorting competition

This is industrial policy by another name: political venture capitalism, which has failed in every country and every century it’s been attempted.

If this is the new right-wing economic strategy, then the difference between Washington GOP and the socialist left is now just the branding.

The Free Market Doesn’t Need a Babysitter
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Let’s walk through the basics—something both parties seem to have forgotten.

Capital markets exist. They evaluate risk. They price innovation. They take losses when they get it wrong and reap rewards when they get it right.

Investors exist. They specialize in picking promising technology and turning it into real businesses.

Entrepreneurs exist. They build companies because they believe in their ideas, not because the federal government holds out a check.

We don’t lack money.

We don’t lack expertise.

We lack the political will to let markets work without Washington playing helicopter parent.

When government inserts itself as an equity partner, one thing is certain:

Profits are privatized.

Losses are socialized.

And taxpayers always end up holding the bag.

Corporate Welfare: Where Both Parties Quietly Agree

Most Americans miss the quiet truth about Washington:

Democrats prefer social welfare.

Republicans prefer corporate welfare.

And both forms of welfare substitute political judgment for market discipline.

The Trump administration’s equity-stake experiment doesn’t put America first.

It doesn’t put workers first.

It puts politicians and bureaucrats first.

And it places taxpayers on the hook for decisions they never made.

The Semiconductor “Crisis” Doesn’t Justify Central Planning

We’ve heard the justification:

“China is subsidizing chips, so we must do the same.”

No.

We don’t beat China by becoming China.

China subsidizes everything precisely because its political system doesn’t allow prices, entrepreneurs, and markets to guide resources. That’s why it wastes more capital than any major economy on earth. That’s why its productivity is collapsing. And that’s why its growth model is unraveling.

Copying China’s industrial strategy is like copying Venezuela’s inflation strategy:

You don’t learn from failure by recreating it.

If the U.S. semiconductor ecosystem needs strengthening—and it does—then fix the barriers preventing private investment:

• cut spending and taxes
• reduce regulatory burdens
• open energy markets
• allow faster permitting
• stop subsidizing competitors
• end distortions that make domestic manufacturing so costly

In other words, get government out of the way.

A Classical Liberal Rule: If It’s a Good Investment, Government Doesn’t Need to Fund It

True capitalism is not complicated:

• People in the market take risks.
• Investors take losses.
• Entrepreneurs reap rewards.
• Government protects property rights, ensures rule of law, and stays neutral.

Once government becomes an investor, neutrality disappears.

Regulators protect their portfolio.

Competition becomes political.

Access becomes relational.

And innovation becomes something you lobby for—not something you earn.

It’s the opposite of a free market.

It’s industrial favoritism with better lighting.

You Cannot MAGA with a Central Planner’s Playbook

I say this with respect for many good policies Trump pursued in his first term:

You don’t restore American greatness by embracing government equity stakes in private firms.

You don’t revive American manufacturing by funneling taxpayer money to politically blessed companies.

And you don’t build the next generation of semiconductors by outsourcing investment decisions to bureaucrats who’ve never built a semiconductor in their lives.

America’s strength has never come from Washington picking winners.

It comes from a free people out-innovating, out-producing, and outperforming the world because they are free—not government-backed.

If we want faster innovation, stronger markets, and global leadership in technology, the answer is simple:

End corporate welfare.

End industrial policy.

Unleash free markets.
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Let America’s entrepreneurs—not politicians—drive the future.

​This week’s episode dives into key election-related issues that could significantly impact Social Security and the broader economy. With projections indicating that the Social Security Trust Fund could be depleted in six years under another Trump presidency, while a Harris presidency may maintain the status quo, voters must consider the fiscal implications of their candidates' policies. Topics covered include the impact of tax exemptions, tariff policies, and entitlement expansion, all of which threaten the solvency of the nation’s mandatory programs. 

Watch the episode on YouTube below, listen to it on Apple Podcast or Spotify, and visit my website for more information.

​In this episode, we discuss:
1) The importance of economic freedom, how it is measured, the rule of law, and the importance of protecting private property;
2) Myths about which European countries are socialist and the history of different economic institutions in Poland, including his latest work “The Road to Socialism and Back: An Economic History of Poland, 1939–2019”; and
3) A history of socialism and communism, what Marx failed to see in countries with capitalism or socialism, and reasons to be optimistic about economic freedom and prosperity worldwide.

​Matt’s bio:

• Matthew D. Mitchell is a Senior Fellow in the Centre for Economic Freedom. Prior to joining the Fraser Institute, Mitchell was a long-serving senior fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, where he remains an affiliated senior scholar. He is also a senior research affiliate at the Knee Center for the Study of Occupational Regulation at West Virginia University.
• Mitchell received his PhD and MA in economics from George Mason University and his BA in political science and BS in economics from Arizona State University. His writing and research focuses on economic freedom, public choice economics, and the economics of government favoritism.
• Mitchell has testified before the U.S. Congress and several state legislatures. He has advised federal, state, and local government policymakers in the United States on both fiscal and regulatory policy. His research has been featured in numerous national media outlets, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, National Public Radio, and C-SPAN.

You can watch this episode and others along with my Let People Prosper Show on YouTube or listen to it on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, or Anchor. Please share, subscribe, like, and leave a 5-star rating!
​
For show notes, thoughtful insights, media interviews, speeches, blog posts, research, and more, check out my website (https://www.vanceginn.com/) and please subscribe to my newsletter (www.vanceginn.substack.com), share this post, and leave a comment.

​In this episode, I discuss the following with John Mozena:
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1) How politicians, even on the right, incorporate components of "sidewalk socialism" and why this is a dangerous game;
2) How corporate welfare is disrupting the natural flow of spontaneous order in society, destroying states, and corrupting universities; and
3) Why decreased spending and regulations are the best paths forward to human flourishing and more.

​John’s bio:

• CEA President John C. Mozena has been on both sides of the economic development wars. A long-time marketing and communications professional and former journalist, he spent two decades in private-sector agency and corporate roles where his clients often included economic development entities and programs. As a public relations agency account lead, he worked with six downtown development authorities, a major regional tourism bureau and convention center, three national industry trade associations, multiple commercial real estate developers and a variety of other clients with interests in economic development policy. He was the author of innumerable press releases and talking points announcing stimulus funding, state tax credits, manufacturing plant openings, public-private partnerships and other deals and initiatives touting “job creation” and “economic impact.”
• After leaving the private sector, Mozena became the vice president for marketing and communications at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, Michigan’s free-market public policy think tank. At the Mackinac Center, he worked closely with the nationally-recognized research and policy team in its Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative to provide marketing and communications planning and support for their economic development policy work. He left the Mackinac Center in 2017 and served as a marketing and communications consultant for public policy organizations while working with the CEA’s co-founders to launch it at the end of 2018.
• In the 1990s, Mozena co-founded the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email (CAUCE), a grassroots organization advocating for policy tools to fight the growing problem of junk “spam” email for consumers. As CAUCE’s primary media contact, he was quoted in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Newsweek, Wired, NPR, PBS, CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, CBS Radio, Fox News Channel, BBC and more than 100 other media outlets.
• He is a graduate of the Atlas Network Academy, including its Think Tank Leadership Training program; a member of the American Enterprise Institute Leadership Network; a Fellow at the Better Cities Project and holds an accreditation in public relations (APR) from the Public Relations Society of America.

You can watch this episode and others along with my Let People Prosper Show on YouTube or listen to it on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, or Anchor. Please share, subscribe, like, and leave a 5-star rating!
​
For show notes, thoughtful insights, media interviews, speeches, blog posts, research, and more, check out my website (https://www.vanceginn.com/) and please subscribe to my newsletter (www.vanceginn.substack.com), share this post, and leave a comment.