Free Trade

Eric Boehm | 12.19.2025 1:50 PM

Like a kid in a toy store with a nearly unlimited supply of someone else's money, President Donald Trump is on a shopping spree the likes of which America has never seen.

With the announcements earlier this month that the federal government will take equity stakes in a company that makes advanced lasers and another that mines critical minerals, the Trump administration has now bought pieces of more than a dozen private companies. What began as an apparent effort to prop up stumbling giants like U.S. Steel and Intel has quickly morphed into a recurring, even routine, behavior. And it is all happening without even an attempt at getting congressional authorization.

As I detailed in a recent cover story for Reason, this pivot towards a more aggressive form of state capitalism is a risky experiment that involves more central planning, invites more corruption, and risks both taxpayer dollars and vital sectors of the economy. Even amid the Trump administration's many other intrusions into the private economic sphere—tariffs, attacks on independent media outlets, and so on—the rapid acquisition of shares in so many private companies has been astonishing.

Since that article was published a few weeks ago, there has been a whirlwind of additional acquisitions. In November, the White House announced

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