A Wall Street Journal analysis by Greg Ip sees a pronounced, even historic, shift happening under President Trump. As recently as a generation ago, the thinking was that China's economy would begin to resemble America's more and more. "Instead, capitalism in America is starting to look like China," he writes. Trump is exerting heavy influence from the White House to get businesses to align to his way of operating. "This isn't socialism, in which the state owns the means of production," writes Ip. "It is more like state capitalism, a hybrid between socialism and capitalism in which the state guides the decisions of nominally private enterprises."
China, of course, goes much further with the practice, and other nations including Russia, Brazil, and even France do so to lesser degrees. China describes its system as "socialism with Chinese characteristics," and Ip coins a similar phrase to describe what's happening in the US:
- "So call this variant 'state capitalism with American characteristics.' It is still a sea change from the free market ethos the U.S. once embodied."
Read the
full analysis, in which Ip points out that our earlier version of "free-market capitalism" had plenty of problems of its own. For one thing, it encouraged "profit-maximizing CEOs to move production abroad." How far Trump is able to go will depend on how well the traditional checks on executive power hold up, he adds.
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