Trump's Acquisition of Stake in Intel Highlights Similiarities Between Right-Wing Nationalist and Left-Wing Socialist Economic PoliciesBoth are prone to promoting government planning and control of the economy, and both have common flaws.
Ilya Somin
8.22.2025
Donald Trump's acquisition of a 10% federal government stake in Intel, a major electronics firm, is an example of the dangerous similarities between right-wing nationalist and left-wing socialist economic policies. Both favor extensive government control, direction, and - as in this case - even ownership of industry. As Reason's Eric Boehm points out, the idea of US government ownership of major computer chip manufacturers was previously advanced by socialist Senator Bernie Sanders. More generally, Steven Greenhut notes, "MAGA's 'right-wing' policies sometimes seem indistinguishable from left-wing ones." Government control of the economy is central to Trump's massive imposition of new tariffs, his immigration restrictions, and more.
In our 2024 article "The Case Against Nationalism," my Cato Institute colleague Alex Nowrasteh outline a wide range of similarities between nationalist and socialist economic policies, and also explained how they have common flaws:
Nationalists in the United States and elsewhere advocate wide-ranging government control of the economy, most notably in the form of industrial policy, protectionism, and immigration restrictionism. In this respect, the nationalism of the right has much in common with the socialism of the left. It's no accident that the more extreme early 20th-century nationalists, such as the Nazis and Italian fascists, explicitly sought to appropriate socialist economic policies for purposes of helping their preferred ethnic groups, as opposed to the more expressly universalist objectives of left-wing socialists. It should not, therefore, be surprising that nationalist economic policies have many of the same flaws as their socialist counterparts…
Given the overlap between nationalism and socialism, it should not be surprising that their economic policies have many of the same pitfalls. The most significant are knowledge problems and perverse incentives arising from dangerous concentrations of power.
* * *
* * *
Source:
https://reason.com/volokh/2025/08/22/trumps-acquisition-of-stake-in-intel-highlights-similiarities-between-right-wing-nationalist-and-left-wing-socialist-economic-policy/
