Is it Comrade President now?
Some conservatives are up in arms about Trump’s decision to have the government buy a stake in Intel.
That’s state ownership of the means of production, isn’t it? Classic, textbook socialism.
“If there is anyone who was a halfway prominent mainstream conservative … 10 years ago who now tells me they wouldn’t have screamed about incipient ‘socialism!’ or ‘fascism!’ about Trump’s Intel ‘investment’,” writes Jonah Goldberg on X, “I presumptively assume they are lying …”
In fact, a whole school of thought on the right, going back decades, has championed industrial policies as bold as Trump’s, if not bolder.
The public face of that school was Pat Buchanan, who was way ahead of the national debate on industrial policy just as he was on immigration.
President Donald Trump is not a socialist, and America has a long history of government getting involved in owning companies — Amtrak is a familiar example.
The for-profit but government-owned passenger-rail company was created under Republican President Richard Nixon.
What Trump is doing with Intel is different from earlier precedents, however.
Trump sees the Intel deal as a first step toward creating an American “sovereign wealth fund,” with many more investments to follow.
The president isn’t looking to the past: this is about keeping America competitive with other nations in the 21st century, including Communist China, which controls the world’s second and third largest sovereign wealth funds.
A sovereign wealth fund is much like private investment funds, consisting of stocks, bonds and other assets expected to appreciate in value.
Traditionally, countries rich in national resources, particularly oil, have used sovereign wealth funds to diversify and grow their economies.
Instead of being at the mercy of oil prices, petroleum-rich nations like Norway and Saudi Arabia channel some of their oil revenue into sovereign wealth funds, which then — much like, say, multibillion-dollar university endowments in America — can produce enormous returns.
Is it a bad thing to pay for government with market profits rather than by raising taxes on citizens or selling debt that eventually has to be repaid with interest?
A nation pays interest on its national debt but earns interest from a sovereign wealth fund.
Mainstream conservatives more than 10 years ago were already behind a plan with many of the same advantages and disadvantages of a sovereign wealth fund: “privatizing” Social Security.
The idea was to let Americans put their compulsory Social Security payments into government-approved funds of their own choosing, which would generate higher returns from market investments than the Social Security Trust Fund could reap from investing exclusively in U.S. Treasury securities.
Conservatives embraced that as a good free-market idea.
Is a sovereign wealth fund any different?
They both carry the same risks, above all what economists call “moral hazard.”
The country got a taste of it in the Great Recession, when financial institutions that bankrupted themselves with bad investments were declared “too big to fail” and had to be bailed out by Washington and the Federal Reserve.
The government can’t allow Social Security to go bust, and if the retirement system’s money is invested in private funds, how many of those could Washington allow to fail, even if they made lousy investments?
Trump is actually taking a double risk — most sovereign wealth funds only aim to maximize returns, producing revenue for the government.
The president, however, also wants to conduct industrial policy with a sovereign wealth fund, by buying into strategically important but economically troubled companies like Intel.
Yet the question isn’t just whether America can run a sovereign wealth fund right — it’s also what happens if we do nothing and rivals perfect the strategy.
Beijing has the $1.3 trillion China Investment Corporation, Hong Kong’s $1 trillion SAFE Investment Company, as well as smaller funds with billions in assets.
During the Cold War, when America faced an international communist threat sponsored by Moscow, conservatives knew absolute devotion to free markets was self-defeating.
William F. Buckley Jr., just coming into his own as a conservative leader in 1952, was staunchly committed to capitalism and small government.
Nevertheless, he wrote:
“Conservatives, and many Republicans, have got to think this problem through. And if they deem Soviet power a menace to our freedom (as I happen to), they will have to support large armies and air forces, atomic energy, central intelligence, war production boards and the attendant centralization of power in Washington …”
Trump is thinking through the problem of our time and how a sovereign wealth fund can tackle it.
Daniel McCarthy is the editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review. To read more by Daniel McCarthy, visit www.creators.com.
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