Trump accidentally revealed a dirty secret — and it has America's CEOs panicking
Socialism is alive and well, and it is growing, though maybe not in the way you expect.
The federal government provides more than $700 billion in contracts to private sector corporations. It also forgoes approximately $1.5 trillion in tax receipts to provide tax breaks for corporations to encourage job-creating investments, or so we are told. The net result is that corporations avoid paying their fair share while we, the taxpaying public, make up the difference.
As if that public support for private enterprise isn’t enough, now President Trump is taking it to the next level by acquiring 10 percent of Intel’s stock in exchange for the $8.9 billion the government is providing the company via the Chips and Science Act.
From one angle, this certainly is an improvement over the big bank bailouts, where the taxpayer took all the risk but received none of the upside once the banks became solvent again. But it also marks a new version of "too big to fail." After all, when Socialist Trump takes a stake in a corporation, he certainly can’t allow that corporation to fail and wipe out all that equity.
This transaction has sent alarm bells ringing in the executive suites of hundreds of corporations on the government dole. As one corporate lawyer put it, “Virtually every company I’ve talked to which is a regular recipient of subsidies or grants from the government is concerned right now.”
What are they so worried about? They are concerned that they will have to give something back to the taxpayer in exchange for our largess. But the frank admission of their fears also tells us quite a bit about how the corporate economy is actually structured. What Trump is laying bare are decades of corporate socialism—the use of taxpayer money to support and enrich private corporations and their stockholders (including the elected officials who continue to trade shares and profit while making laws and regulations that impact the companies in which they hold shares).
This is the real swamp that is siphoning wealth and stable jobs away from working people. This is the swamp that has caused so many voters to give up on government. This is the swamp full of quicksand, sucking politicians into the suffocating cycle of endless corporate donations. Draining the swamp means ending corporate socialism, dismantling the apparatus that rewards big corporate contributions and empowers lobbyists arguing for big business over the interests of working people, and neither of our two political parties is willing to do that.
By accident, Trump’s overt support for Intel creates an opportunity for the Democrats to help working people secure their jobs from corporate greed. If the Democrats had any guts—granted that’s a big “if”—they would offer legislation prohibiting any corporation receiving taxpayer funding or subsidies from implementing compulsory layoffs. Instead, all layoffs would be voluntary based on financial buyout packages, the kind that are often offered to upper-level white-collar employees. If you take taxpayer money, you can’t force taxpayers out of their jobs. That would certainly seem fair and just to working people, who are too often simply told to take a hike just to further enrich executives and Wall Street investors.
After all, what was the Chips and Science Act for? One big reason for this big investment, supposedly, was to bring thousands of new jobs to America. The Biden administration awarded Intel an $8.5 billion grant, plus $11 billion in favorable loans, based on Intel’s claim that it would create 20,000 temporary construction jobs and 10,000 more permanent manufacturing positions.
Meanwhile, since 1990, Intel has spent $152 billion on stock buybacks. It has chosen to use its revenues to buy up its own shares, rather than investing in the company’s future. Stock buybacks boost the prices of a company’s shares and enrich its top executives and major Wall Street investors. They do not increase the worth of the company. Hey, why not grab more taxpayer money, buy back more shares, and shove the gains in your pocket as fast as possible? Isn’t that what all those corporate donations are for?
And the jobs? Nothing is guaranteed. In fact, as the Chips Act was moving through Congress, Intel laid off 2,000 workers!
So, instead of giving 24-hour speeches that no one can remember, why don’t a few Democrats get up on the Senate floor and say something like this:
“Now that the United States taxpayers own 10 percent of Intel, let’s make our investment contingent on protecting the livelihoods of working people. Mr. President, tell Intel that during the life of our investment, the company will not be permitted to conduct compulsory layoffs. Only voluntary buyouts will be permitted. Join us in a bill that puts the protection of jobs of working people front and center.”
Shouldn’t all the Democrats and even the Josh Hawley Republicans get behind such job-protecting legislation?
But here’s what comes to mind after writing that sentence: Not a chance! Get real! What are you smoking? I can’t imagine the Democratic leadership embracing such a proposal. Their knees knock at any mention of policies that offend corporations and Wall Street.
That’s why we need a new party of working people. Not a third party, but a true alternative to the corporate-dominated Republicans and Democrats. That’s what 57 percent of the voters of Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin really want. They want a party that is willing to put working people at the center of economic policy, rather than provide corporations with more taxpayer dollars.
Corporate sycophants will call that socialistic, as if enhancing the jobs and income of working people is a slur. Meanwhile, the super-rich have no problem building gold-plated castles of corporate socialism... to enrich themselves.