On Monday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that the United States and China reached a “framework deal” on TikTok, likely ending a long-fought battle over the fate of the app. In recent years, many have been critical of attempts to leverage TikTok in trade deals. Democratic Senator Mark Warner previously warned that treating “national security as a tradable item” was dangerous.
But Warner, and many Democrats, are missing the bigger picture. While debating Chinese government control over one company, the US government has been gaining control over others. In recent months, as trade officials clashed over Beijing’s on percent golden share in ByteDance, the US government acquired a similar golden share in US Steel, secured a 9.9 percent stake in Intel, and won promises of revenue shares from Nvidia for specific chip sales to China.
This is the Democratic Party’s fundamental problem. They keep attacking Republicans for positions the GOP abandoned years ago, while avoiding battles where the real differences lie. They fight mighty battles against the champions of free markets, limited government, and private ownership. But that Republican Party is gone. As a result, the opposition moves on virtually unscathed, all while threats to American principles go unchallenged.
More and more, we see Republicans under Trump embracing “command capitalism,” where the government takes direct financial stakes in private companies, resembling the economic models of Russia and China. Yet Democrats continue attacking phantoms. They criticize Trump’s TikTok deal as insufficiently hawkish on China, not as dangerous government overreach into private markets.
Senator Warner’s criticism of the TikTok case focuses exclusively on whether the deal addresses Chinese influence. He won’t acknowledge that the federal government is taking increasing shares and using regulatory leverage to influence corporate decisions. Why? Because many Democrats do too.
Republicans often justify state capitalism in the name of “America First” nationalism and national security. Democrats advance it under the banner of climate policy, industrial renewal, or social equity. Both parties are moving to a model where the government picks winners and losers, where free enterprise is at the whim of leaders, and where individual economic freedom is subordinate to political objectives.
But whether Republican or Democrat, what’s happening should alarm anyone who believes in limits on government power. When presidents of either party can restructure private companies through executive “deals,” we cross a dangerous line. When the government can take equity stakes in businesses and demand revenue shares, we’re abandoning the principle that private property exists without the approval of the state.
Government involvement in business isn’t new. From the transcontinental railroad to Fannie Mae, Tennessee Valley Authority power plants to Post Office operations, Washington has long shaped private enterprise. But these historical examples involved infrastructure development, crisis response, and natural monopolies. Taking stakes in competitive companies for routine policy leverage represents an unprecedented shift towards the state capitalism model America once opposed.
This isn’t about defending corporate profits or opposing reasonable regulation. It’s about preserving the boundaries that protect individual liberty from concentrated power. The same executive authority Trump uses to restructure TikTok today can be used tomorrow to control any business deemed relevant to “national security,” a category that expands with each iteration.
Citizens who value liberty over partisan loyalty must recognize that the battle lines aren’t Republican against Democrat, but liberty versus authoritarianism. We need to defend principles even when they’re inconvenient, even when they benefit people we don’t like, and especially when the other side isn’t playing fair.
For all Americans, it takes demanding leaders who respect the boundary between public and private power. It takes supporting politicians who defend limits when easy power grabs seem expedient. It takes defending unpopular free market ideals in the name of higher principles. And it means thinking beyond political victories to the long-term health of our institutions.
Most importantly, it means recognizing that we face a choice not between Trump’s state capitalism and Democratic state socialism, but a choice between twin authoritarianisms and the principles of liberty that built American prosperity.
While Democrats debate tariff rates and China policy, Trump is reshaping the relationship between government and private enterprise in America. Our founders understood that concentrated power corrupts, regardless of who wields it or the nobility of their intentions.
As President Trump prepares to speak with Xi Jinping about government control over private companies, the question isn’t whether we’re “getting a good deal,” but whether we’re still the country that believes private enterprise can flourish without state approval. We haven’t traded that principle away yet. But unless we demand leaders to respect the boundaries between public and private, we will.
