The Trump administration is planning to purchase a stake in yet another independent company, continuing its socialist – if not blatantly authoritarian – trend of making the government a stakeholder in supposed “free market” enterprises.
This trend stands in clear contrast with an administration that publicly decries socialism and a conservative movement that has labeled things like free buses and government-owned grocery stores as anathema to private industry and the American way of life.
Nonetheless, the administration added to its list of part-owned businesses when the Commerce Department announced a deal with xLight, a company developing extreme ultraviolet lithography tools that are seen as key to the development of highly coveted semiconductors.
In a news release Monday, the Commerce Department said it would authorize up to $150 million in federal incentives for xLight under the CHIPS and Science Act — legislation that Trump has publicly opposed — saying the agency will receive $150 million in xLight equity in return.
“This partnership would back a technology that can fundamentally rewrite the limits of chipmaking,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said in a statement, going on to say the deal reflects “the CHIPS program at its best.”
The Wall Street Journal reported that the deal would likely make the federal government xLight’s largest shareholder.
Essentially, what this all means is that a program the president has openly decried for even existing is now going to be using taxpayer money to purchase part of a chip production company — potentially boosting an industry that stands to enrich himself and his tech-invested family.
This, it appears, is the Republican idea of the “free market” at work.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.