Neither “state capitalism” nor “fascist capitalism.” Both are logically invalid terms because Capitalism by definition means the absence of government interference into—or control of—the economy (i.e. the separation of economics and state). Trump’s policies are, in fact, straight-up socialism of the fascist, as opposed to the Communist, variety.
Related Reading:
Trump has declared world trade war, disrupting business plans, abrigating contracts, upending consumer budgets, rendering $billions of productive investment useless, hammering Americans’ retirement portfolios, and killing jobs. It’s much worse than expected, which was already bad. For the first time, an American Administration is deliberately trying to engineer a global recession—or worse. And it’s based on discredited poverty-inducing 17th Century economics. It’s pre-Adam Smith. It’s primitive. And it’s also based on unimaginable paranoia. What does it even mean when Trump says “other countries have been ripping us off” and other such nonsense? Countries don’t trade. Private individuals do. When a foreign company exports its product to the U.S. to offer for sale, and an American decides to buy it, both sides win. Trade is WIN-WIN. Who's getting “ripped off?” Nobody.
Economically, Trump’s collectivist premise that this will “make America wealthy again” really means make the government wealthier. The money raised by the tariffs—which will be much less than Trump dreams—will not enrich the average American. It will be sucked out of American consumers to enrich the government. Somebody’s getting ripped off, alright—American consumers, American businesses that depend on global trade, and foreign companies that supply the goods that enrich Americans’ lives. Trump cares about America, in the same sense as a big government Progressive—but he doesn’t care about Americans.
Trump’s trade war is not only economically destructive. It is immoral. It violates the inalienable individual rights of Americans to freely trade with other people. Economic freedom is fundamental to Americanism. Trump is trampling all over the American Dream.
Too many Americans have been flipping out over a few Federal workers losing their jobs and some spending being cut. But this is penny-ante stuff—and in principle positive. The real danger is in Trump’s trade war. I hope Congressional Republicans get a backbone, join with Democrats—as 4 rational Republicans just did on Canada tariffs—and outlaw Trump’s whole tariff scheme, and curb the presidential power to impose tariffs willy-nilly by executive order—a power no president should have. No, it’s not the end of the world—not yet. Perhaps the hope that this is all a negotiating ploy, and things will ultimately work out, is still alive. But we’re in dangerous territory. Make no mistake. Trump has led our country into taking the first step down a road that ends in World War III. Congress must stop Trump on this issue. That would really be Putting AMERICANS First.
At this posting, the stock market is experiencing a massive coronary.
But there is one potential silver lining developing. Trump’s unconstitutional power grab may be jolting Congress into growing a spine. The Washington Post reported . . .
A bipartisan bill that would give Congress final approval on tariffs imposed by a president was introduced Thursday by Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Maria Cantwell (D-Washington). The bill seems to have little chance of passage but underscores the unease among some Republicans with Trump’s tariffs plan, which sent shock waves through financial markets and rattled business owners around the world on Thursday.
I’m not holding my breath. Maybe enough Republicans will join all Democrats in stripping Trump, and the presidency, of it usurped power to impose tariff taxes, which Constitutionally belongs to Congress. Unfortunately, too many Republicans are blind Trump backers, Democrats have their own protectionist problems. But “I’ll keep my fingers crossed.”
Related Reading:
Trump just imposed the largest tax hike since 1942 without congressional approval
Trump’s tariffs are a tax by another name, and the power to levy taxes lies with Congress.
If Trump were trying to implement an income tax hike of similar magnitude by executive order, it would be plainly unconstitutional. Everyone knows that only Congress can set tax rates. What’s different about tariffs? On its face, nothing. Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution states: “The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises.”
The McKinley Tariff that Trump has said he admires was not an executive order signed by President William McKinley; it was legislation sponsored by McKinley when he was chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. So, too, the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act — which did much to worsen the Great Depression — was passed by Congress. It was not an executive order from President Herbert Hoover.
The problem is that, since the 1930s, Congress has delegated considerable authority to the president to set tariff rates. But, as in so many other areas, Trump is stretching executive authority beyond the breaking point.
The United States has done much better during the past 50 years than other industrialized economies: U.S. GDP per capita is 2.4 times larger than Japan’s and 1½ times larger than Germany’s. In October, just before Trump’s election, the Economist proclaimed the U.S. economy “The envy of the world.” How is this an emergency?
“This is a shocking abuse of the president’s authority to declare national emergencies,” she told me. “I don’t think that will stand up to a court challenge.” It is imperative that Congress take back the power to set tariff rates. Only elected legislators are allowed to raise taxes, and only elected legislators should be allowed to raise tariffs — which are simply taxes under another name.
Phony Liberation From a Phony War
Hillary’s Cave-in to the Left on Free Trade
NAFTA, Whatever its Flaws, Was a Good Thing
CNN reported on the February 28, 2025 “economic blackout. In Today’s ‘economic blackout’ began from an unlikely source. But it’s tapped into Americans’ anger, CNN’s Nathaniel Meyersohn reports:
In early February, John Schwarz, a self-described “mindfulness and meditation facilitator,” proposed a 24-hour nationwide “economic blackout” of major chains on the last day of the month.
Schwarz urged people to forgo spending at Amazon, Walmart, and all other major retailers and fast-food companies for a day. He called on them to spend money only at small businesses and on essential needs.
“The system has been designed to exploit us,” said Schwarz, who goes by “TheOneCalledJai” on social media, in a video to his roughly 250,000 followers on Instagram and TikTok. “On February 28, we are going to remind them who really holds the power. For one day, we turn it off.”
I posted this article to Facebook, with this commentary, slightly edited for clarity:
John Schwarz, the architect of the recent “economic blackout” of major retailers and fast-food companies, says the purpose is to protest “the system [that] has been designed to exploit us.” Are these the same companies growing big by successfully “exploiting” us by providing mass market products that improve our lives and that we willingly buy? Is this the same system, called Capitalism, that grew out of the Founding principles of unalienable individual rights that make America great and moral and our lives so rich and free?
Schwarz demands that we “spend money only at small businesses and on essential needs.” Are these the same small businesses many of whom started the bait-&-switch practice of greeting us with a welcome sign for credit cards, only to then charge us a penalty for using them? And why only “essential needs?” Is poverty the goal of this guy? What makes our lives worth living is that we can afford much more than essential needs.
Schwarz’s ignorant crusade is, of course, Marxist nonsense. Companies no more exploit us than consumers exploit them. Companies engage in voluntary trade with their customers. Trade is win-win and thus non-exploitative. Count me out of this and other such idiotic, anti-American charades. I won’t join the army of useful idiots who blindly fall for it. Business—especially big business—is today’s most persecuted minority. We should be thankful for big business and instead be protesting the encroachment of big government on our lives and freedoms.
The article puts MAGA as the inspiration for the protest. But undoubtedly it was probably inspired, at least in part, by Joe Biden’s Big Lie of blaming private enterprise for the inflation the Federal Government's own policies caused. Remember “shrinkflation,” “greedflation,” and “corporate Greed?”
Related Listening:
America’s Persecuted Minority: Big Business by Ayn Rand, Recorded live at Chicago’s McCormick Place. [This talk was also published as an essay in Rand’s book Capitalism, The Unknown Ideal.]
Obama’s Fascist “Partnership” With Big Business
B of A's Debit Charges: It's About More Than Fees
Big Government vs. Big Business; or, Political Power vs. Economic Power
The Dollar and the Gun by Harry Binswanger
The Star-Ledger Exploits a Workers Death to Attack Big Business
Quora: ‘Is capitalism based on the exploitation of others?’
My special thanks this year go to business, both large and small. Business is the mainstay of the free Capitalist economy. What amazes me is how innovative and productive business continues to be given how much the Capitalist—i.e. free—portion of the economy has shrunk under the weight of the massive, and still growing, regulatory welfare state. Add to that that business, especially the most successful, is the most persecuted minority in America today. It is under attack, not for its vices, but for its virtues. By whom? By egalitarians, who label their money-earning success as "greed." With all of the Woke claptrap about “oppressed” groups, business is somehow not among them. Yet business gets blamed for every societal ill, even as it manages to keep us all alive and somehow moving forward under the meager remnants of Capitalistic economic freedom—and still make a profit. So, here’s a shout out to American business: THANK YOU for your profit-seeking service.
RELATED:
ARI: TURN #GIVINGTUESDAY INTO TRADING TUESDAY
This is the time of year that America rightly salutes, and gives thanks to, our military veterans who have protected this nation from foreign enemies for more than two centuries. I join in that celebration. My thoughts about them are conveyed in my Memorial Day tribute, and need no restatement here, except to reiterate the essence of that post:
The highest tribute I can pay to our veterans is to say that they were cut from the mold of the Founding Fathers; that they did not set out to die for their country but rather that they set out to fight for that radical set of ideals that is the United States of America.
But America’s veterans are not the whole story. So, I’d like to use this Veterans Day post to acknowledge the unsung hero of America’s military prowess, the productive American citizen. No military as strong and as competent as America’s can exist in a vacuum. It requires something else - something indispensable – a great economy.
America's economy, historically the most productive the world has ever seen, is the foundation that supports our military personnel. American taxpayers pay trillions of dollars. American defense contractors invest in and produce the most advanced weaponry in the world, weaponry that American soldiers rely upon to do their jobs and stay alive. American technology produces the high tech means for our intelligence community to gather the information our soldiers need to keep track of the enemy.
What enabled the creation of the economic powerhouse that enabled the creation of our military powerhouse? What is the foundation of that foundation?
In 1776, the Founders of this nation signed the Declaration of Independence, which sanctioned the individual to egoistically pursue his happiness in support of his life, by guaranteeing him a government that protected his unalienable individual rights – his liberty – to act upon his own reasoning mind. That short document unleashed the power of the human mind, possessed individually by every person. The result was an unprecedented explosion of productiveness leading to exploding general prosperity and a standard of living unimaginable by the wealthiest noblemen of centuries past. The cause of that progress is simple: the unleashing of every individual to self-interestedly strive to make his own life the best it can be, by his own effort, in voluntary trade with others, free from the coercive interference of his fellow man, including the government. Another name for this social statement—free market capitalism. America was built not by sacrifice, as it is fashionable to assume, but by personal achievement, fueled by the personal pursuit of happiness, unleashed by individual liberty.
America’s response to the threat of the Axis powers at the onset of World War II demonstrates this incredible power behind America’s military power—American free, private enterprise. If you’ve ever visited the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, you’d be struck—I know I was—by the section that displays the array of private, profit-seeking companies that rose to meet the threat posed by Germany, Italy, and Japan. Companies from Boeing and Caterpillar to Harley Davidson and the Mars Candy Company converted their consumer-oriented production facilities to produce for the war to defend America. Dozens of household names are profiled in the display, and undoubtedly far more smaller companies labored anonymously in support of the war effort.
Germany’s Hitler was said to have ridiculed America as soft, because America was good at making consumer goods like razor blades and washing machines, but not military hardware like aircraft. This was mentioned in a fantastic film narrated by Tom Hanks titled Beyond All Boundaries, presented by the museum. Indeed, charts on display at the museum showed that, in 1939, America’s military was utterly dwarfed not only by the cumulative size of the Axis powers Germany, Italy, and Japan, but in comparison to those countries individually as well. But just a few short years later, America’s military dwarfed all three combined, as America’s industrial might turned its focus from producing consumer goods to producing for the American military. Hitler obviously underestimated what can happen when a free enterprise nation, which only wants to live in peace, freedom and prosperity, is threatened by tyrannical aggression.
Tyranny, as the history of WW II demonstrates—and as Germany, Italy, and Japan learned the hard way— is no match for a free market capitalist nation when that nation is aroused to turn its industrial might to self-defense. America won not only because of the bravery and skill of its soldiers, but in no small measure because America simply out-produced—in quantity and technological might—the enemy. Not only did America rearm amazingly fast, it did so even while rearming Britain and supplying arms to Russia, China, and other nations battling against the Axis powers. As the museum’s website explains:
Total war meant that all levels of the economy and all segments of society dedicated themselves to victory. FDR urged Americans to join the war effort by “out-producing and overwhelming the enemy.” While scarcity, rationing, and shortages became regular topics of conversation, so too did talk of duty, patriotism, unity, and victory. The United States, which had the world’s 18th largest military in 1939, mobilized itself for total war production almost overnight once the nation entered the war. The immediate conversion of peacetime industries into war production facilities involved companies of all sizes and types. Toy companies began to manufacture compasses. Typewriter companies made rifles and piano factories produced airplane motors. The Ford Motor Company ceased producing cars and began turning out tanks and bombers. And behind each soldier stood hundreds of civilian workers making everything an army needs to fight around the globe. The Depression was over. Full employment was a reality and confidence in victory was strong.
From 1940 until the Japanese surrender, the United States produced more than 300,000 aircraft, 86,000 tanks, and 12.5 million rifles. Its shipyards were just as productive, building 107 aircraft carriers, 352 destroyers, and 35 million tons of merchant shipping. The US also supplied a majority of war materials for its Allied partners. By 1945, the U.S. had produced more than twice the war supplies of Germany, Italy, and Japan combined.
If Hitler underestimated America, some in Japan, it seems, were more trepidatious. As Japan’s political leadership confidently prepared for war with America, Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto soberly warned:
Should hostilities once break out between Japan and the United States, it would not be enough that we take Guam and the Philippines, nor even Hawaii and San Francisco. To make victory certain, we would have to march into Washington and dictate the terms of peace in the White House. I wonder if our politicians (who speak so lightly of a Japanese-American war) have confidence as to the final outcome and are prepared to make the necessary sacrifices.
After his nation's sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, Yamamoto was said to have uttered, “I fear all we have done today is to awaken a great, sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”
Indeed, from a starting point of 18th largest military, America had, as FDR envisioned and as Yamamoto feared, out-produced and overwhelmed the enemy. So, let’s celebrate, along with the brave contributions of our vets, the productive American of all income levels—the CEOs, entrepreneurs, innovators, scientists and inventors, workers, investors—and the resultant industrial powerhouse upon whose shoulders our military might stands. Let’s celebrate the individual pursuit of happiness that is the fuel for that American strength. Let’s celebrate productive Americans’ willingness to pay for, build, and support the military whose job it is to protect the borders of a country that guarantees his right to the pursuit of the good life.
Today, the foundation of America’s economic and military might is under intense attack by those who would “fundamentally change America”—a change that, in actuality, has been going on for decades. Let’s stand up and reject that “change” from liberty to tyranny, and from economic freedom to central planning, from capitalism to socialism, and instead renew our allegiance to the Founding Fathers, who engineered a change from tyranny to liberty. The best tribute one can give to our military veterans is to vow to fight for the rediscovery and reinstatement of the ideals that this country stands for: the supreme value of the individual human being, his freedom, and a government whose sole duty is to protect his right to live and prosper for his own sake.
Because that is what American veterans fought for.
Happy Veterans Day!!
-Mike LaFerrara
Related:
Atlas Shrugged – America's Second Declaration of Independence
Freedom's Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II by Arthur Herman
Related Viewing:
Why a Free Man Fights—Lt. Col. Scott McDonald, USMC
Defenders of Capitalism never cease to try to “educate” socialists on the glories of Capitalism, as if socialists are merely uninformed. For example, check out What the Socialist Left Fails to Grasp about Wealth and Innovation in America by Preston Brashers of The Heritage Foundation. Writing for FEE, Brashers writes:
“We cannot afford a billionaire class whose greed and corruption have been at war with the working families of this country for 45 years,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) once said. But when you consider the vital economic activities funded by billionaires, it becomes clear that it’s a society without billionaires that we can’t afford.
Not all Americans are rich. But all of them are more prosperous because they live in a society where great entrepreneurs can attain great wealth through their vision, innovation, and industriousness.
Brashers goes on the recount (for the umpteenth time) the great benefits driven by Capitalism’s liberated fortune builders. I agree the economic case for Capitalism is critically important and must be regularly reiterated. But does Brashers really believe that Senator Sanders doesn’t understand the economics of Capitalism, let alone its moral foundation?
Of course socialists understand. That's why they hate it. And want to seize the wealth and kill innovation. They hate the rational self-interest that drives Capitalism. They hate the justified economic inequality that freely flourishes under the freedom of Capitalism due to man's nature. They don't care about the truth. They are totalitarian power-lusters and egalitarian hate-mongers. After 200 years of socialist "experiments" in all its manifestations, from the voluntary socialisms documented by Charles Nordhoff in his The Communistic Societies of the United States; Harmony, Oneida, the Shakers, and Others and John Humphrey Noyes in his History of American Socialisms to the coercive kinds like theSouthern slave "beau ideals of communism" plantations defended by George Fitzhugh in his seminal pro-slavery anti-Capitalist Sociology For The South: Or The Failure Of A Free Society to the bloody 20th Century Nazi and Marxist horrors to today's Venezuela—how can they not grasp the glories of wealth, vision, innovation, and industriousness under the even limited freedom of modern mixed economy Capitalism?
So here’s a memo to Preston Bashers and his fellow pro-Capitalist socialist apologists:
To be a socialist today, In the face of the history of free market, individualist societies , is an unforgivable sin. Ignorance, to the extent it exists among the useful idiot followers of Sanders, AOC, and their ilk, is no excuse. Mistakes of this size are never made innocently. There are no innocent socialists. The author gives socialists a wholly unwarranted benefit of the doubt. We Capitalists must recognize that socialists are evil, and not be afraid to say so.
Related Reading:
Another Counter-Productive Attempt to Define Capitalism as Something it’s Obviously Not--Unselfish
Capitalism and the Moral High Ground by Craig Biddle
Why Capitalism Needs a Moral Sanction
Socialism's Totalitarian Nature Cannot Be Obscured by 'Democratic Socialism'
The Capitalist Manifesto by Andrew Bernstein
Criminal Socialism vs. a Free Society
What is Capitalism? by Ayn Rand
What is Socialism? by Robert Heilbroner
Why Capitalism is Selfish--and Why That’s Good
QUORA: ‘How natural is capitalism to human nature?’
Capitalism is 100% consistent with human nature.
Some say Capitalism is not “natural” because it liberates man to alter nature to man’s benefit. The natural world, they claim, is a planet unimpacted by human intelligence, productive work, and ingenuity.
But this is bogus and contradictory—i e, a logical fallacy. There is nothing intrinsically valuable about unaltered nature. Nature “created” man. And like all life forms, man has a nature, an identity, and means of survival.
Man’s unique means of survival is his reasoning mind, which he can apply to his physical efforts to alter his environment to suit his needs. It is this attribute, which no other known living species possesses, that Naturalists hate and resent.
The social condition that man needs to successfully apply his means of survival is individual freedom governed by individual rights. The only social system that systematically establishes these conditions is Capitalism. Hence, the Naturalists, driven by hatred of the vastly improved-upon world they see all around, absurdly claim Capitalism is not natural.
Naturalists look around with horror and see roads, buildings, farms, and every other product of human productiveness we take for granted, and see something unnatural. They fantasize about the time when man will return to the state of nature of animals and, like their hunter-gatherer ancestors, live in “harmony” with nature, with the misery, poverty, short, and brutal stone-age existence that that implies.
The question is: How can an entity that arose in nature, by natural processes, be unnatural? It can’t. How can the social system most consistent with man’s fundamental nature as a being of reason and freedom be unnatural? How can the resulting advanced industrial civilization we see and live in be unnatural?
Of course Capitalism is natural—that is, consistent—with human nature. No other answer to the above question makes a shred of logical sense.
Related Reading:
Why Capitalism is Selfish--and Why That’s Good
Books to Aid in Understanding Rational Selfishness
Capitalism and the Moral High Ground by Craig Biddle
Why Capitalism Needs a Moral Sanction
Capitalism Unbound: The Incontestable Moral Case for Individual Rights
