U.S. President Donald Trump and lady Melania Trump depart for travel to Texas to tour areas affected by deadly flash flooding, from the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., July 11, 2025. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
I’m old enough to remember when American politics was divided between those who wanted less government (they were called “conservatives,” or the Right) and those who wanted more social safety nets (called “progressives,” or the Left).
It’s hard to find Right or Left these days. Instead we have something no one has ever seen in America — a personal takeover of nearly all the institutions of government and, increasingly, the private sector, by a would-be dictator.
Trump is on the way to occupying Democratic-led cities with the Army, National Guard, and ICE — in what appears to be a dress rehearsal for the 2026 midterms.
He is telling Republican states to super-gerrymander in order to squeeze out more Republican seats in Congress, to help retain Republican control of the House after the 2026 midterm elections.
He is trying to silence criticism from universities, museums, law firms, and the media. And targeting critics for prosecution, such as Adam Schiff and John Bolton.
But that’s hardly all of it.
At the same time, Trump is taking personal control of the U.S. economy.
He’s trying to control the Federal Reserve Board, threatening Jerome Powell with unflattering stories about his expenditures on the Fed’s building and Fed governor Lisa Cook with stories about her home loan.
He’s imposing his will on key industries, from semi-conductors to steel.
He’s given the chip giants Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices export licenses to sell their semiconductors to China on condition that they pay the U.S. government 15 percent of what they make on those sales. (Not incidentally, Trump has reported substantial personal holdings in Nvidia.)
He’s converting nearly $11 billion of grants that the government had given Intel (part of the Biden administration’s CHIPS and Science Act) into a 10 percent stake in the company, worth $8.9 billion, held by the government. Presumably, this would let Trump decide on its CEO.
His White House has even created a scorecard that rates American corporations on how loyal they are to Trump. Corporations with “strong” ratings (among them, Uber, DoorDash, United, Delta, AT&T, and Cisco) are to be rewarded with tax and regulatory benefits, while “low” rated corporations could face retribution ranging from Justice Department and regulatory lawsuits to damaging executive orders, harsh regulations, and unbridled scorn from Trump.
Before they poured money into Trump’s initiatives and PACs, many Big Tech corporations were facing federal investigations and enforcement lawsuits. Those investigations and lawsuits are now being dropped.
Trump’s import taxes (tariffs) are the results of individual deals between Trump and particular countries, as well as between Trump and big American corporations. So far, America’s trading partners have agreed to invest over $1 trillion in the American economy. Who will oversee such investments? Trump.
In sum, an increasing part of our economy is no longer being determined by supply and demand but by the deals Trump is striking.
Authoritarians rely on vast bureaucracies to control industry, as does China’s Xi Jinping.
But the new order being imposed on American industry doesn’t come from a vast authoritarian bureaucracy. It’s personal and arbitrary. A single so-called “strongman” is beginning to control everything.
I don’t know the proper term for this. State capitalism? Fascist capitalism?
Whatever we call it, it will be Trump’s downfall because his arbitrary and mercurial decisions are making the private sector nervous about investing in the U.S. economy, causing global lenders to demand a higher risk premium for lending to the U.S., and pushing the economy toward both inflation and recession — so-called “stagflation.”
If nothing else brings him down, the economy surely will.
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Just a reminder that my new memoir,Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org.
Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/From Your Site Articles
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