Critics warn that Trump’s demands for business leaders to step down, and for the government to take a cut of sales, threaten American-style capitalism.
Corporate America doesn’t want to fight with President Trump in public. But as a result, it’s ceding him an unprecedented amount of control over the shapeof U.S. business.
In the past week, the president has turned up the heat on big companies and their CEOs to an extent that is unprecedented even by Trump’s norms-shattering standards. He has publicly attacked companies and their executives throughout his political career — but now he’s demanding firings of executives who aren’t even household names, such as a corporate economist at Goldman Sachs.
On Monday, Trump announced an extraordinary deal for the U.S. government to take a 15% share of Nvidia’s H20 chip sales in China as a condition for easing restrictions to allow the chip to be sold there. Then his Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, on Wednesday said the administration may ask other companies for similar payments in the future.
« Trump has always used the bully pulpit of the presidency to try and direct business activity towards his desired ends — but in the second term, we’ve seen this taken to a whole new level », said Ryan Bourne, an economist at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.
The Nvidia revenue-sharing arrangement, in particular, sounded alarms among the U.S. business community — which tends to skew fiscally conservative and anti-regulation, and which in general welcomed Trump’s reelection last year. By demanding a cut of a private company’s sales, in exchange for the right to do business, Trump is defying the traditionally Republican gospel of free-market capitalism.
On Monday, a columnist for The Wall Street Journal warned that Trump is « imitating [the] Chinese Communist Party » and transforming the U.S. economy into something resembling China’s government-controlled « state capitalism. »
It’s a mounting worry shared by other business experts. « It is a huge concern », said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a Yale University management professor who regularly speaks with CEOs.
« This ‘Marxist MAGA’ movement keeps expanding more and more, taking control without the resistance of private-sector decision-making », he added. « So that means we have winners and losers based on cronyism. »
In an emailed response to NPR, White House spokesperson Kush Desai did not address the concerns about cronyism or « state capitalism. »
« President Trump’s hands-on leadership is paving the way towards a new Golden Age for America », Desai wrote.Trump amps up his attacks on CEOs and other executives
Trump has long used social media and his other public statements to cajole, criticize and praise companies and individual CEOs. They, in turn, have actively sought his approval — especially since he won reelection in November.
During his first term, many in corporate America openly criticized Trump over policies including his ban on immigrants from some Muslim-majority countries, or they sought to distance themselves from his most controversial statements, like his response after violence erupted at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
