American and Chinese flags are displayed on President Trump’s motorcade as he visits the National Archives Museum with China’s President Xi Jinping on Friday in Washington, D.C.
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Speaking in the Oval Office this week, President Trump once again claimed he wanted to give $5,000 to every adult in the U.S. — but only if Republicans win the House and Senate in November.
It’s an idea he first proposed at the Republican midterm convention earlier this month. And from the moment he proposed it, even some of his allies were skeptical.
Broadcasting from the convention, Michael Duncan — one host of the conservative Ruthless podcast — said while the proposal might be politically smart, the better policy might be to instead “just cut taxes by $5,000.”
“We don’t need helicopter money,” he added.
His co-host Josh Holmes agreed: “Maybe we don’t have a bureaucrat who shuffles paper from the left side of his desk to the right and then sends you a check for your time.”
The right-leaning satire site the Babylon Bee was more pointed: “Trump Pledges That If Voters Defeat Socialism In November, They Will Each Get An Equal Redistribution Of Wealth From The Government,” read one of its headlines.
This is the contradiction that keeps arising in Trump’s second term, as the leader of the party that has often claimed to support free markets repeatedly tries to bend the economy to his will. But it’s especially striking as Trump continues to try to label Democrats as “communists.”
“We will defeat the communists, and that’s what they are. They’re not socialists, they’re not democrats, they’re communists,” Trump said at the Republicans’ midterm convention.
And millions heard the message in a TV ad that aired last week: “Together we will defeat communism, socialism, and Marxism in America,” says Trump in the ad, which states at the end that it was funded by the federal government. An ethics group has filed a lawsuit against taxpayer money being used for the overtly political advertisement.
“Transactional interventionism”
The Trump administration has announced equity stakes in more than 30 private companies, imposed dozens of tariffs, and taken the unusual step of trying to lower interest rates via the Treasury Department.
These big, unorthodox policy moves are certainly not communism, but they’re also not typical Republican free-market capitalism. So what could you call it?
“I would say transactional interventionism,” says Scott Lincicome, vice president of general economics at the libertarian Cato Institute.
To him, Trump has no set economic philosophy. Rather, many of Trump’s policy moves are aimed at achieving a specific outcome — like using a tariff to boost a particular industry or punish a foreign country … or suggesting a $5,000 check to reward votes.
“He is very transactional,” says Lincicome. “He thinks of all of these issues in a silo and he does whatever, you know, whatever he wants in terms of the direction. It’s not free market or socialist. It just is.”
In a statement, White House spokesman Kush Desai said the president is “implementing traditional free market policies that do work — like deregulation and tax cuts — while rectifying longtime America-Last policies that have left Americans behind.”
When it comes to dissonance with Trump’s anger at what he calls communism, the government’s equity stakes in an array of companies have maybe gotten the most attention.
The U.S. government has taken stakes in private companies before. In the financial crisis, it famously swooped in to help auto companies and banks. But there are big differences between that and what Trump’s doing.
“I think what’s different right now is that the number of deals is striking,” says Jonathan Hillman, senior fellow for geoeconomics at the Council on Foreign Relations, who also worked in the Biden administration’s Commerce and State departments. “I think you may ask, ‘Well, you know, in the past there were crises. What’s the crisis now?'”
Hillman says you can make the case that some supply chains, like critical minerals, need shoring up. But the 39 deals Hillman has tallied so far, he says, are just a lot.
“I do feel like there is some urgency to addressing some of these areas,” he said. “But again, I think the level of deal activity is notable, and I also think we’ve just seen the beginning of this.”
Hanging out with a communist and a socialist
Calling Democrats “communists” is a political tactic — one that takes the “socialism” label Republicans have hurled for years and brings it up a few notches. And it appears “socialist” is losing its power as an epithet — Gallup reported recently that 43% of Americans have a positive view of socialism, a new high.
However effective Trump’s rhetoric may be, though, his own actions could undercut it. Last week, at an appearance with Zohran Mamdani, Trump said of the New York City mayor, “I want him to be a great mayor, and he’s certainly got potential, got great potential.” Mamdani is a democratic socialist.
Days later, Trump welcomed China’s communist President Xi Jinping to the U.S. for a White House visit, describing the leader in a social media post as “strong, vibrant, and fit.” Even while Trump has continually spoken of China as a rival that the U.S. must defeat, he also has multiple times praised Xi — calling him “tough,” “smart” and a “great leader.”
Trump’s continual talk of “communism” is also complicated by the fact that Americans have varying understandings of what “communism” and “socialism” are, says Sheri Berman, professor of political science at Columbia University.
“With the term ‘socialism,’ people tend to be all over the place when asked to provide some kind of understanding of what that term means,” she said, pointing to the policies people who embrace the “socialist” label tend to support. “‘We want a more interventionist government. We want the public provision of some basic things that everybody needs,’ you know, healthcare, free education, yada, yada, yada. That’s social democracy. That’s not communism.”
There are real-world communist regimes, though, and Berman noted that there are Americans with family from places such as Cuba or the former Soviet Union, or other authoritarian states like Venezuela. Those people may have entirely different fears of communism than an American who has never experienced it.
“They have something very specific that they are thinking of, and they do not like that term,” Berman said. “Those are the kinds of folks that Trump is trying to appeal to.”
That said, the “communist” label also likely resonates with Americans old enough to remember the nearly half-century-long Cold War.
Meanwhile, Trump has just over two years left in office, which raises a new question: what comes next? Lincicome, at the Cato Institute, says Trump has opened new policy doors for the next president.
But what comes after Trump leaves office? Lincicome, at the Cato Institute, says Trump has opened new policy doors for the next president.
“The next administration can come in and suddenly say, ‘Oh, well, the last one did this. So we’re going to take these equity stakes and do something with them, or we’re going to take new equity stakes,'” he said. “And so, again, we’re really just operating in this gray area of expansive new power.”
And as soon as the midterms are over, the talk about who’s leading that next administration will only accelerate.
This story originally appeared on NPR
