'This is socialism': Trump's private sector intervention causes heartburn on right

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump’s directive that the federal government acquire a substantial stake in microchip-maker Intel has shaken some on the right, worried that the president is ditching long-sacrosanct Republican economic views.

The GOP for decades has billed itself as the party of free markets, accusing Democrats of favoring direct government interaction in the private sector. But under Trump’s second administration, that charge has steadily been getting harder to make.

Trump earlier this year flew to Pittsburgh to celebrate what he referred to as a deal he was heavily involved in inking that gave the federal government a “golden share” in U.S. Steel as it merged with Japan’s Nippon. Then, last month, the president announced he had decided the government should take a 10% share in Intel.

And, he soon made clear, this new Trumpian economic approach would continue just seven months into his four-year term.

A reporter asked him in the Oval Office last week: “What do you say to some who say this is a bit hypocritical? And is this the new way of doing industrial policy?”

Trump’s reply signaled a major shift in U.S. economic policy — and a break with his party’s core views: “Yeah, it sure, it is. I want to try and get as much as I can.”

“The case of Intel was interesting, but I hope I’m going to have many more cases like it,” he said, adding that having the U.S. as a partner “would be a very good thing for Intel.”

Trump also contended that Intel executives would agree to “give” the government 10% of their company, asserting that “you’re not paying for it.” But under the agreement, Washington is set to purchase 433.3 million Intel shares at a cost of $20.47 apiece — which calculates to an $8.9 billion government expense.

Some Republican lawmakers and opinion-makers see a march toward socialism, a pejorative charge candidate Trump once lobbed at Democrats, often along with other descriptors such as “radical” and “extreme.”

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, a member of the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, called Trump’s Intel transaction a “terrible idea.”

“If socialism is government owning the means of production, wouldn’t the government owning part of Intel be a step toward socialism?” the GOP senator wrote on X.

Retiring North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis told CBS News’ Major Garrett that he sees a Soviet-style policy emerging.

“I don’t care if it’s a dollar or a billion-dollar stake in an American company, that starts feeling like a semi-state owned enterprise, à la CCCP,” Tillis said, using the Russian abbreviation for the Soviet Union. “You’re going to have to explain to me how this reconciles with free-market capitalism.”

Conservative commentator Erick Erickson, in a recent episode of his popular online show, blamed Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick for being the “genius behind the socialism that he wants the Trump administration to embrace.”

“I’m sorry, but no. This is terrible. This is socialism. The U.S. government would become the largest shareholder of Intel. This is actual socialism, happening by a Republican administration. There’s no national security justification for this,” Erickson told his large audience. “In fact, I had some anonymous account on Twitter say, ‘Yeah, there’s a national security justification for having control of Intel.’”

“Really? We don’t have control of Raytheon. We don’t have government control of Nvidia. We don’t have government control of Apple. We don’t have government control of Boeing. We don’t have government control of Lockheed Martin,” he added. “We don’t have government control of any major weapons developer or defense contractor, but you want 10% control of Intel in exchange for money the government already promised to give them. … My God, people, what have we been fighting for for the last decade? You want smaller government. This expands it.”

The discontent from some on the right comes as an Economist/YouGov poll released Tuesday showed Americans’ dissatisfaction over the president’s economic policies and approach. More than half (53%) disapproved of how Trump is handling jobs and the economy, with 41% saying they “strongly” disapproved; 38% said they approved. Trump’s overall job approval rating also underwater in the same survey, with 55% disapproving and 41% approving.

In a rare-but-candid moment early Friday morning, Trump appeared to admit a major economic and foreign policy defeat when he said in a social media post that India, a U.S. ally and major trading partner, was now aligned with Russia and China. “Looks like we’ve lost India and Russia to deepest, darkest, China. May they have a long and prosperous future together!” he wrote on his Truth Social platform.

Washington and New Delhi traded an estimated $212.3 billion in 2024, up 8.3% from the 2023 level of $16.3 billion, according to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was reportedly angered by Trump’s April announcement of a 26% tariff on goods made in India, which the American president upped to 50 percent via an Aug. 6 executive order to punish Modi for purchasing Russian oil as Trump tries to end Moscow’s war with Ukraine. Collectively, the developments appear to have jeopardized a decades-old warm economic and diplomatic relationship — and potentially push America’s 10th-biggest trading partner into the Russia-China axis.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a potential contender for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination, has used the Intel move and Trump’s economic approach to keep up his aggressive criticism of the 47th chief executive.

“Trump has completely perverted capitalism. With his recent takeover of intel, Trump has become the leading socialist of our time,” Newsom’s media office posted Sunday on X.

Two days earlier, Newsom’s office had posted an artificial intelligence-generated image of Trump showing the president in front of the White House with Soviet-style flags flying behind him. The post also included this message: “With his takeover of U.S. companies like Intel, this Labor Day America is praising CHAIRMAN TRUMP, our nation’s leading Socialist!!”

Mark Tepper, CEO of financial company Strategic Wealth Partners and a regular guest on right-leaning Fox News and Fox Business, said Trump’s Intel move raised “big questions.”

“Trump calls it a win for America, but Intel’s issues go deeper — inefficient operations, weak chips, no customers,” he wrote on X. “Should the government really be in the business of owning private companies?”

Trump, a career real estate executive, almost daily casts himself as the businessman in chief, with a unique ability to make deals — though, as many Democrats have noted, his business career and first presidential term cast some doubt on that portrayal.

“Trump justified the U.S. government taking a stake in Intel and his intent to take similar stakes in other companies as just good business,” Peter Schiff, chief economist and global strategist at Euro Pacific Asset Management, wrote on X. “If he wanted to be a businessman, he should have stayed in the private sector. Constitutionally, presidents are not elected to do business.”

Meanwhile, House Republicans have taken a more conventional legislative approach to the Intel situation by including a provision in their version of the fiscal 2026 defense policy bill stating that “it is the sense of Congress that artificial intelligence is a transformative technology and United States policy should ensure that United States persons, including small businesses, startups, and universities, are in the best position to innovate and harness the potential of artificial intelligence.”

“It should be the policy of the United States and the Department of Commerce … to deny licenses for the export of the most powerful artificial intelligence chips, including such chips with a total processing power of 4,800 or above; and … to restrict the export of less advanced artificial intelligence chips to foreign entities in countries of concern so long as United States entities are waiting and unable to acquire those same chips,” according to the measure.

The Intel deal was structured in a way that, should Intel spin off its chip-making foundry business, the U.S. government could take an additional 5% stake, aiming to create an incentive for the company to keep AI chip production on U.S. soil.