This article was originally published in the September 2026 print issue of the Salient.
Roses are Red
Violets are blue.
You built a good company
Now the state runs it, too.
After losing a company $116 million in a single quarter, halving its earnings, and driving its CEO to cut his losses and try to close up shop, the President of the United States did what any good, self-made capitalist would: invoke his “golden share” of that company, U.S. Steel, and force it to stay open.
If one finds this ludicrous, he is probably in the majority of Americans, but in the minority of the administration that supposedly represents them. This is not because the administration believes that state management of U.S. Steel is actually meritorious, but because it has become allergic to the notion of merit — a foundational concept of the nation — altogether.
The claim that Trump’s administration lacks “merit” may elicit certain familiar examples: the Education Secretary ran a wrestling empire (albeit a great one!); the former Homeland Security Secretary governed a state closer to Canada than Texas, and a Fox News host was hired to prosecute a war only Fox News hosts still think is successful.
But this accusation may seem spurious when considering Trump’s economic policy. After all, Trump preserved his most qualified appointments for the agencies with the most influence over the market. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent managed a successful hedge fund and knows from experience what kinds of policies crash an economy. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick ran Cantor Fitzgerald, a major investment firm. United States Trade Representative Jamieson Greer was chief of staff of the same office during Trump’s first term. Finally, Director of the National Economic Council Kevin Hassett previously chaired the Council of Economic Advisers. These are administrators with sterling resumes.
This discrepancy begs the question of how so many well-credentialed, right-of-center individuals, led by a Commander-in-Chief who (without irony) vowed to “defeat communism, socialism, and Marxism in America, once and for all,” themselves elected by a party similarly opposed to the red menace, could all embrace antithetical policies to their purported principles. After all, these economic leaders’ resumes should have made them socialism’s fiercest opponents: a hedge-fund manager knows the worth of a price signal, a trade lawyer knows the cost of a golden share, and an economist can, and should, recite why nationalized economies rot. Yet, they have sleepwalked toward socialistic policies with their eyes wide open.
In this sense, our economic leadership’s bona fides do not vindicate but indict them. These bona fides show that our leaders know exactly what they’re doing but are unwilling to consider these policies based on their merits. A culture of absolute fealty has developed, so that the criterion for a policy’s validity is conformity to the administration’s line, while economic expertise is repurposed as cover for the things that the same people would have condemned were it politically convenient.
This shift is evidenced by the fact that our government is currently facing a “credibility shock,” meaning that investors no longer trust the administration’s words and promises to mean anything. In other words, when leaders behave counterintuitively — when they approve policy that runs counter to their credentials and character — trust changes hands from administrators who deserved the trust to policies that do not. Or, in terms this administration might prefer, trust is redistributed.
This crisis of credibility was, in some ways, inevitable, because merit is far more than the pedigree one can brag about or the resume they build. True merit must be actively exercised; it requires the willingness to tell the powerful when they are wrong, the courage to divorce impulse from reason. It is this dissent that provides for nuanced, effective policy. Consequently, merit is not merely a credential one holds but a duty one discharges. Unfortunately, the current administration cares more about loyalty than nuance.
Defenders may say this is just a culmination of President Donald Trump’s campaign promises, that it is him putting America first and bringing back industry. However, the English language has a word for a government that seizes private industry and mandates that it bleed money indefinitely. Unfortunately, that word is not “America First.” It is socialism.
The result is the triumph of unopposed big government impulses within the Republican Party, not because bad ideas have been convincing but because bad character has rewarded them. More concretely, the administration has coerced a TV station to take down a comedian who offended conservatives, called for the punishment of economists who published a study it did not like, and has de facto taken over operations for US Steel. Conservatives, rightfully, bemoan the radical Democratic Socialists of America’s push to abolish the Senate for being too “undemocratic,” and yet, the right’s leaders seem to have no qualms about abolishing the very filibuster mechanism that makes the countermajoritarian institution of the Senate so august in the first place. It is no wonder that many of Trump’s policies have gotten support not from the right, but from the left.
Worst of all, the drive to grow the size of the federal government has transformed into an addiction to the most dangerous, seductive kind of power-grab: the takeover of the economy. The U.S. Steel case is not isolated. Since then, the Administration has taken a 10 percent stake in Intel (making the federal government the largest shareholder), a 15 percent stake in MP Materials, a 10 percent stake in Lithium Americas, and a 10 percent stake in Trilogy Metals. Nvidia and Marvell Technology have since agreed to give the Trump administration 15 percent of their China chip sales, giving the United States government an incentive to arm an increasingly belligerent communist dictatorship.
What this Administration lacks is not the knowledge required to recognize socialism but the character to name it. In eliminating dissent and independence, this Administration has unknowingly adopted the ideology most antithetical to conservative values. By removing duty from the definition of merit, expertise is reduced to mere decoration. The bond market has already started charging for this difference. In November, so will the voters. Hopefully, the American economy can defend its independence better than its Cabinet has.
I'm with you Emmanuel. So is Merriam-Webster: "Begging the question means 'to elicit a specific question as a reaction or response,' and can often be replaced with 'a question that begs to be answered.' However, a lesser used and more formal definition is 'to ignore a question under the assumption it has already been answered.'"
Acton’s law probably explains a good part of this. As does First Things’ 8/1/2016 article by Matthew Schmitz “Donald Trump, Man of Faith.”