Via International Man - September 11, 2025

International Man: The US government recently took a 15% stake in MP Materials and a 10% stake in Intel to counter China’s dominance in rare earth elements and revive the domestic semiconductor industry.

Are these national security necessities, or a fundamental break from free-market capitalism?

Doug Casey: First, whenever you hear the term “national security,” rest assured, some grifter is selling you on a fraud.

It’s natural for the State, like all living entities, to want to grow. The problem is that the State has coercive power, unlike other entities in society. Force and coercion are antithetical to free market capitalism. Worse than that, people think that the State is something magical. They think that “we the people” own the State. So they’re favorably inclined toward State-owned industries, idiotically believing they’re “stakeholders.” Sure. Just like Soviet citizens were stakeholders.

Trump is making some huge mistakes with what you just mentioned about MP Materials and Intel. As well as taking a so-called golden share in US Steel, and forcing Nvidia to pay 15% of its revenue on sales to China. This is all right out of Mussolini’s playbook.

Most people don’t know that Mussolini coined the word “fascism.” In ancient Rome, an ax, which represented the State, was surrounded by rods called fasces, which strengthened it. Mussolini’s idea was that the State and large corporations would be hand in glove, working together in a “public-private” partnership. Unfortunately, everything that Trump is doing these days is headed in that direction.

International Man: Government equity stakes risk blurring the line between politics and business. Do they build real long-term resilience, or are they politically driven projects destined to fail without state support?

Doug Casey: The State does things because they’re politically productive, not because they’re economically productive. And when you do things that are economically counterproductive, no matter how popular they may be with the hoi polloi, the result will be the failure of the enterprise and a lower standard of living for everybody.

The State is not oriented to political power, not economic profit. And because the State isn’t oriented to profit, nobody has a real stake in the success of its ventures. It’s naturally inefficient. It destroys capital. Trump seems to think that, because he is in charge, things will be different. He’s wrong. MP and US Steel will start to resemble the Post Office or the DMV.

Or the US railroad industry. High levels of regulation caused passenger trains to fail. The government then put them together as Amtrak—losses went higher, efficiency went lower.

Or NASA, which had a day in the sun when it first started. That was before, like all state enterprises, it devolved into a bureaucracy. That’s why almost everything is being done now by SpaceX and other private enterprises.

What I’m afraid of is that Trump will inadvertently, unwittingly . . .

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