WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump has over the past year been snapping up America’s means of production — the literal definition of communism — even as he makes a habit of labeling virtually all of his critics and political opponents “communists.”Since retaking office in January 2025, Trump’s executive branch has acquired stock or other ownership interest in dozens of U.S. companies, from $400 million in mining company MP Materials to $1 billion in defense contractor L3Harris/Missile Solutions to $8.9 billion in Intel, making the government the chipmaker’s third-largest shareholder. In all, according to a recent Cato Institute analysis, the U.S. government is now part-owner of 30 companies, with no end to the practice in sight.“I’ve been doing public policy for 25 years and I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Cato’s Tad DeHaven, who previously worked for Republican U.S. senators and former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels.Ty Cobb, who worked in Trump’s first-term White House Counsel’s office and is now a strident critic, pointed out that having the government own factories is a textbook example of communist economic theory.“Nothing says communism like state-owned enterprises,” he said.“DONALD TRUMP IS THE LEADING SOCIALIST OF OUR TIME! WITH HIS GLORIOUS GOVERNMENT TAKEOVER, THE SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF AMERICA ENTERS A BOLD NEW ERA OF GOVERNMENT-RUN BUSINESS! ALL HAIL COMRADE TRUMP!” Gavin Newsom, California’s Democratic governor and a frequent target of Trump and his allies for his alleged socialism, told HuffPost in an all-capitals statement.Trump himself has not been shy about grabbing ownership shares in private companies, even bragging about it in public remarks ― evidently unaware of the contradiction in having his administration acquire production capacity while simultaneously attacking others as “communists.”“We had Intel, and we made a purchase of 10 percent of Intel. We got it for the right price and we made approximately $72 billion on that deal,” he said July 23 about coercing the company.Yet at that same White House event, just minutes later, Trump railed against communists — twice.“They call them socialists, but these people are communists actually more. I think it’s a much more accurate term,” he said, and then, soon after: “We can’t let the communist ideology even ― we don’t want to even think about it for this country, it would be terrible.”In recent months, Trump rarely speaks publicly without claiming that Democrats are actually all communists and that he is the only thing protecting the country from full-on collectivism. While Trump has for years thrown around the C-word on occasion, he and other Republicans have started using the term more amid renewed attention to the Democratic Socialists of America, a left-wing group whose members have won a handful of Democratic primaries in recent months. Trump’s White House said his actions are precisely what voters want.“President Trump was given a resounding mandate by the American people to smash Washington, D.C.’s obsession with consensus orthodoxy that has let Americans down,” spokesman Kush Desai said. “The Trump administration is turning the page on Joe Biden’s economic disaster by implementing traditional free-market policies that do work, like deregulation and tax cuts, while rectifying longtime ‘America Last’ policies that have left Americans behind.”Some Republicans, though, pointed out that the government taking ownership stakes of private companies is the exact opposite of “free-market policies.”“Conservatives used to clearly recognize this and call it out as corrupt, command-and-control economics,” said Amanda Carpenter, a former aide to Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz and now a researcher at the nonprofit Protect Democracy.Nearly two decades ago, many Republicans accused former President Barack Obama of socialism for taking temporary equity stakes in car companies as part of the bailout to keep them from going bankrupt during the global economic crisis. Those shares were sold as the manufacturers regained their footing.Under Trump, there is no such economic calamity, yet Republicans have largely remained silent.“You would have had hearings, and Republicans would be trying to stop it and foaming at the mouth on Fox News,” DeHaven said, imagining if a Democrat had done what Trump is doing, adding that Obama’s automaker investments at least could be justified as an emergency measure. “The motivation there wasn’t to make money and make the federal government into a mutual fund…. Accusing the other side of being communists and things of that nature, it just points out the fundamental unseriousness of Donald Trump.”In any case, even setting aside philosophic considerations, having the government pick winners and losers in the economy was not a good idea for taxpayers, University of Michigan economics professor Justin Wolfers said, but added that it does point to Trump’s supreme self-confidence. “If you think you’re smarter than markets, then you substitute your judgment for that of markets,” he said.RelatedDonald Trumpcommunism