Government Equity Stakes, Steel Vetoes, and Subsidized Gas. Pick a Lane, Comrades.
There is a word for an economic system in which the government takes equity stakes in private companies, acquires veto power over major corporate decisions, and subsidizes the price of commodities below market rates to demonstrate political benevolence to the population.
The word is not capitalism.
The Republican Party has spent sixty years calling Democrats socialists for proposing things like paid family leave, expanded healthcare, and student debt relief — policies that would put money in working people’s pockets without the government owning anything. The same party, now in power, has:
— Acquired a 10% stake in Intel Corporation, worth approximately $55 billion at current prices, after Trump publicly said he regrets not asking for a larger stake.
— Acquired a 15% stake in MP Materials, a rare earth producer.
— Acquired a 10% stake in Lithium Americas Corp.
— Acquired a 10% stake in Trilogy Metals Inc.
— Negotiated a “golden share” in U.S. Steel — not traditional equity, but veto authority over major corporate decisions without ownership — as a condition of allowing Nippon Steel’s acquisition to proceed.
— Is in preliminary discussions to receive a 5% equity stake in OpenAI, currently valued at $852 billion, which would be worth approximately $42.6 billion.
— Opened branded gas stations selling fuel at $3.47 a gallon — priced specifically to honor the 47th president — in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, at prices that industry experts say are mathematically impossible without a subsidy or an imminent collapse.
This is the Republican Party’s economic program. State equity. Industrial vetoes. Price-controlled fuel. Branded commodity distribution at below-market rates, announced by the White House official account with the words “FREEDOM FUEL HAS ARRIVED.”
If a Democrat proposed any of this, the Heritage Foundation would call it Venezuela.
The Intel Trade
The Intel acquisition is the most straightforward and, in some ways, the most instructive. In August 2025, the U.S. government purchased 433.3 million Intel shares at $20.47 per share, investing $8.9 billion for a 9.9% stake — tied to CHIPS Act funding. Intel’s stock is now trading near $127. The government’s stake is worth approximately $55 billion — a roughly 6.2x return in less than a year.
Trump has since publicly said he regrets not asking for a larger stake.
The president of the United States, leader of the party of free markets and limited government, regrets that his government doesn’t own more of a private semiconductor company. He said this out loud. To reporters.
The administration frames the Intel investment as securing critical supply chains against China — and there is a legitimate national security argument for why the U.S. government might want to ensure domestic semiconductor production. But there is also a legitimate question about what it means when the government owns 10% of a major corporation whose regulatory treatment, federal contracts, export licenses, and competitive environment are all determined by the same government. The conflict of interest is not hypothetical. It is structural.
The Golden Share
The U.S. Steel situation is, if anything, more philosophically revealing. The administration did not buy U.S. Steel. Japan’s Nippon Steel bought it. But as a condition of approving the acquisition, the administration demanded — and received — a “golden share”: the right to veto major corporate decisions at a company it does not own, in exchange for allowing a foreign company to purchase an American one.
This is not a market transaction. This is not capitalism. The government has inserted itself as a de facto board member of a steel company owned by a Japanese conglomerate, with veto authority over major decisions, contributing no capital, assuming no risk, and bearing no fiduciary obligation to shareholders. It is power without accountability, exercised through a mechanism that exists outside the normal structures of either public ownership or private investment.
Golden shares were used extensively by European socialist governments in the post-WWII era to maintain control over privatized state industries while technically allowing private ownership. Margaret Thatcher’s government used them when privatizing British Telecom and British Gas, and the practice was subsequently challenged under European Union competition law as incompatible with the single market’s principles of free capital movement. The United States federal government has now adopted the instrument that the EU found incompatible with market capitalism.
The OpenAI Proposal
The OpenAI proposal is the most ambitious and the most nakedly coercive of the lot. OpenAI has proposed handing the U.S. government a 5% stake in the company, according to a report in the Financial Times. The potential holding would be worth roughly $42.6 billion at the artificial intelligence startup’s recent $852 billion valuation.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman argued that giving the public a financial interest in the company is the best way to share the upside of AI. This is a generous framing of what is, functionally, a protection payment. OpenAI and Anthropic have both had the release of upcoming models held up by government scrutiny. The White House requested that OpenAI limit the release of its upcoming model to a small number of government-approved partners. Anthropic said the U.S. government lifted export controls on its most advanced models following negotiations. The pattern is clear: the government creates regulatory risk for the company, and the company offers equity to reduce that risk.
If the overture is taken up by the Trump administration, that would mean the government would have a vested interest in weighing whether or not to limit the release of an OpenAI model.
The government that regulates you becomes your investor. Your investor has an interest in your stock price. Your stock price is affected by your regulatory environment. The government that regulates your environment now has an interest in managing that environment in ways that benefit its investment. This is not a theoretical concern about incentives. This is the structure being built, deliberately, company by company, industry by industry.
Trump has described the U.S. taking an ownership stake in AI giants as “a beautiful thing” that would make Americans “partners in this revolution.”
Partners in the revolution. Comrades, if you will.
Freedom Fuel
And then there is the gas.
The White House noted that the $3.47 price tag is a nod to President Trump, who in his second term serves as the nation’s 47th president. “President Trump is leading the charge to lower gas prices this summer — putting more money in your pocket,” the White House added.
“There’s no way those stations could operate the way a traditional retailer would, without at least breaking even on fuel,” said Jeff Lenard, spokesperson for the National Association of Convenience Stores. Based on OPIS data, participating Freedom Fuel Network stations that sell gas at $3.47 would lose at least 17 cents for every gallon of fuel they sell.
GasBuddy’s head of petroleum analysis, Patrick De Haan, told Quartz the price point boasted by the Freedom Fuel gas stations is not realistic without some form of subsidy, saying, “Generally, when losses happen, somebody’s got to pay for it.”
Nobody knows who is paying. A White House spokesperson told CBS News that the company behind the Freedom Fuel Network is private and owns 25 filling stations across New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The spokesperson said the Trump administration is not involved with the company and is not subsidizing the gas stations, adding that the stations can offer lower prices by reducing their profit margins. The Freedom Fuel Network was registered as a limited liability company in Delaware on June 23. Its website was registered on June 13. An attorney who submitted the trademark application declined to provide any additional details about the company.
So: a mystery company appears three weeks before its gas stations open. The White House announces it. The price is set at a number that celebrates the president. The company loses money on every gallon. Nobody knows who is covering the losses. The White House says it’s not involved.
“The average price of gas when Biden left office was $3.12,” wrote journalist Aaron Rupar. “Trump wants to throw a parade for himself over one station where it’s $3.47.”
The arsonist is putting out the fire. “You raise prices, then pretend when they go down you’re some savior,” wrote former Rep. The Iran war that Trump started — during active peace negotiations — closed the Strait of Hormuz and sent gas prices surging past $4 a gallon nationally. The Freedom Fuel Network opened with branded stations selling gas at $3.47 — still above the $3.12 that Biden left — at prices that cannot be sustained without someone subsidizing the loss, on behalf of a company nobody can identify, announced by the White House official account.
The Ideology That Isn’t
What ties all of this together — the Intel stake, the U.S. Steel golden share, the OpenAI proposal, the Freedom Fuel mystery — is the complete absence of ideological principle. The Republican Party does not oppose government ownership of private companies. It supports it, when the government is Republican. It does not oppose price controls. It supports them, when the price is set at a number that celebrates the president. It does not oppose state capitalism. It practices it, while calling its opponents socialists for proposing paid sick leave.
This is not a coherent economic philosophy. It is power dressed up as policy. The government acquires equity in the companies it wants to control. It takes veto power over the companies it doesn’t want to own. It brands gasoline with the president’s number and subsidizes it below cost before the midterms. It calls all of it “freedom.”
The word for this, in the political science literature, is state capitalism. In the looser vernacular, it is crony capitalism. In the most precise available language, it is exactly what the Republican Party has spent sixty years accusing Democrats of building.
Welcome to the People’s Republic of MAGA. The White House says: “President Trump is leading the charge to lower gas prices this summer — putting more money in your pocket.”
The people’s gas, at the people’s price, from the people’s branded stations, subsidized by unknown people, for the 47th president.
Comrades.