Republicans say they hate communists. So why do they like Donald Trump?

Analysis Republicans say they hate communists. So why do they like Donald Trump? Eduardo Porter Trump supporters may be surprised to learn the state takeover of means of production is not driven by the left

Americans will never accept the Democratic party’s slide to the left, or so desperate Republicans are hoping.

With the midterm elections fast upon us, Zohran Mamdani’s promise of a few city-run bodegas in New York City will scare the bejeezus out of middle America. Disgust over the democratic socialists’ unicorn-and-puppy promises of a world without capitalism will keep the Republicans in power.

Leading the charge against the new reds-under-the-bed is Donald Trump. “Together, we will defeat communism,” Trump promised in his recent TV ads .

Trump’s supporters might be surprised to discover that the United States is, indeed, sliding in the direction of a command and control economy. But the state takeover of the means of production is not being driven by the left. The grab for the US’s productive resources is the project of none other than Trump – who, it’s a fair guess, has never read Lenin.

The latest evidence comes in data crunched by the V-Dem project in Sweden, which measures the erosion of democracy around the world. It built a scale to gauge “state ownership of the economy”. As noted by Cullen Hendrix from the Peterson Institute for International Economics, from 2002 to 2024, the US ranked among the four countries with the least state control. In 2025, the first year of Trump’s second term, it dropped from second place to 16th.

By November of last year, the Trump administration had spent more than $10bn taking stakes in companies he deemed essential for national security, from Intel to a range of ventures mining for critical minerals. It also acquired an option to take a stake in Westinghouse, which makes nuclear reactors. And it blackmailed Nippon Steel into granting Trump’s Washington a “golden share” in exchange for the go-ahead to purchase US Steel.

To be fair, Trump’s acquisitiveness notwithstanding, the US is not even close to flirting with the flavor of socialism favored by the Soviet Union and its satellites in the second half of the 20th century. By the V-Dem accounting, Washington’s stake in the economy is still smaller than in 163 countries.

Government-run companies are a standard feature in many market economies. The Norwegian government has a majority stake in its massive oil company, which puts the country in 18th place. Even “communist” countries are pretty capitalist: private companies contribute 60% of China’s GDP .

And in a geopolitical landscape shaped by competition with China, there is a reasonable case to be made for Washington to take equity stakes in industries that are critical for American leadership and security, and which might not develop autonomously in competition with rivals heavily subsidized by Beijing.