Economists are afraid to admit the uncomfortable truth about Trump's strategy

The Red Scare as Cover for Cartel PowerWhat the Story Actually SaysA few progressive Democrats have beaten progressive incumbents in blue districts, and Trump has responded by babbling about “communism.” The article’s useful fact is simpler than its noise: Democratic voters are not suddenly embracing some ideological lurch. They are rejecting incumbents they think are not fighting hard enough, while Trump and his allies try to turn every challenge into a specter of foreign subversion.Who Holds PowerThe power in this story sits with Trump. He controls the White House, he is the one buying equity stakes in private companies, and he is the one using the state to reward allies, punish enemies, and consolidate leverage over the economy. That is not confusion. That is institutional power being used for dominance.The article’s central inversion is brutal and telling: Republicans scream “communist” while Trump behaves like a state-capitalist strongman building a cartel. He is not defending markets. He is corrupting them.The Blame ShiftThe “communism” line is not an economic critique. It is a smear designed to make Democrats seem alien, illegitimate, and un-American. The article says that plainly enough, even if it keeps circling back to ideology as though the fight were mostly semantic.It is not. When the government buys stakes in firms like Intel and U.S. Steel, the issue is not whether a columnist can pin a label on it. The issue is who gets control, who gets favored, and who gets squeezed. Trump’s version of “government ownership” is not public stewardship. It is patronage with a flag on it.What Democrats Are Actually FightingThe article gets closer to the truth when it notes that the Democratic policies Republicans call “communist” are usually basic pro-competition measures: the Affordable Care Act, antitrust enforcement, and efforts to restrain monopoly power. Those are not attacks on markets. They are attempts to make markets function for people instead of for entrenched firms and political patrons.That is why Trump’s rhetoric matters. He and the right do not use “communist” because the word fits. They use it because it poisons the ground under any democratizing policy before it can be judged on merit.Crony Capitalism With a Red FlagThe more revealing pattern is not socialism, but crony capitalism dressed up as anti-left panic. The article notes that Trump’s moves may be tied to family interests and to punishing enemies. That is the real system: selective state power, private gain, and political loyalty enforced through economic pressure.This is why the “free-market” language is so rotten. The GOP’s supposed market morality collapses the moment power can be used to extract rents, grant favors, or discipline opponents. Then the market is suddenly an instrument of the boss.The Larger PatternThis story is about misdirection as a governing tool. Trump’s politics depend on turning every democratic or anti-monopoly impulse into an extremist threat while he expands control over the economy from above. The accusation of “communism” is a mask for a far more familiar arrangement: oligarchic capture, political retaliation, and state-backed profiteering.Democratic voters are reacting to that reality more clearly than the party elites who still treat it like a messaging problem. It is not a messaging problem. It is a power problem. Get full access to Systemic Error at paulstsmith.substack.com/subscribe