Democrats debate taking a page from Trump's economic playbook
Why it matters: Democrats are gaining new power to scrutinize Trump's corporate investments, even as his approach gains traction within their own party.
Key points
- It's been a striking reversal for a president who has repeatedly criticized Democrats for government overreach.
- "The Trump administration has widened the aperture for industrial policy," Jennifer Granholm, who served as President Biden's Energy Secretary, said at a gathering of energy and climate experts Axios attended in Berkeley, Calif., last month.
- How it works: The Trump administration has announced more than $30 billion in investments across nearly 50 deals involving government ownership and related financial arrangements, according to a Council on Foreign Relations tracker.
President Trump is turning the federal government into an investor in dozens of private companies, and some Democrats are considering following his lead as their party emerges emboldened from the midterm elections.
But those investments were intended as temporary measures to rescue struggling businesses, unlike Trump's national security-focused investments.
Additional details
- It's not well suited to pick winners and losers in the marketplace," said Tim Pawlenty, former Republican governor of Minnesota who now leads the Solar Energy Industries Association, at the same University of Chicago event.
- "If it starts to go down the slippery slope of 'it's just the flavor of the day company because we like it' or they're well connected or whatever, then you got problems." Threat level: "Buying stakes in public companies is so, so, so dangerous," Casten said.
- ensuring domestic manufacturing of certain parts of supply chains, like electronic control systems that operate energy infrastructure, and even pursuing "smart tariff policy" to have competitive markets.
- government can act as patient capital that helps derisk an investment with a long time horizon or technological risk that would otherwise not attract sufficient private investment," said Jonathan Hillman, a Council on Foreign Relations fellow behind the tracker.
- Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) has also expressed openness to federal ownership stakes, while raising concerns about the Trump administration's lack of transparency and accountability, he told Semafor.
How this summary was made: extractive summary — built from the sources' own reporting. It is drawn only from the reporting of the sources listed below — read the originals for full detail. How we summarize →
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