While Barack Obama’s infamous advice to business owners that “You didn’t build it” was bad enough, a recent statement by Donald Trump is even more collectivist. He claims to own the store.
The Financial Times reports on an interview with President Trump in Time magazine (“Donald Trump stipulates a call from Xi Jinping and claims he has a Financial Times Coupt ‘200 deal on April 25, 2025)):
When asked what Xi followed him in the conversation Trump claimed, the US president mentioned the power he had as a gate caper in the US consumer market. “It’s a huge, beautiful store, and everyone wants to go shopping there. And on behalf of the Americans, I own a store. I set a price. If you want to shop here, this is what you need to pay.”
What Trump has been disrupting imports and exports is that his trade policy is to determine which suppliers his store will buy. But let’s ignore this little detail.
If the country’s main ruler says he owns a store, he represents a submission Quito that is closer to Marxist theory. The country is a collective, and the shop is a collective property. Apparent owners of private shops, if any, will benefit from special privileges from the group or are merely state agents. You cannot purchase or sell from a group store without the permission of a gatekeeper and without tax gouging.
Calling “people” is merely an excuse to justify the state’s ownership of the means of production. Nohing can be owned by everyone, as ownership means control. Collective ownership involves impersonal “owners” blocking his share to Mayck. Once he removes it, he must stick to it and sacrifice for it. In chapter 13 of Justice and Its Environment, Anthony’s Jasai discusses the existence of “social ownership” of Marxist collectivism. Owning and controlling the means of production “on behalf of the people” or controlling the working class is merely a propaganda trick. In both the left collectivism (Marxism and Socialism) and the collectivism of rights (populism and fascism), shops belong to people who either control the state or act as agents. (Note the big major agent issues there.) Populist leaders give the myth of collective ownership a different flavour by pretending to thrust people into it.
There is no need to add, but no classic liberal theorist claimed that the top officials of governments in a free country would “own the shop.”
Whole thought that populist of America rule was more Marxist than ordinary social democrats and socialists today? In fact, it is not surprising, as both the left and right hold collective and political choices as caps and private choices. Trump is not a Marxist, he is just another kind of collectivist.
Another hypothesis is that his store ownership claim led to Trump making noises with his vocal chords without grasping the meaning of the sound. Although economists are methodologically reluctant to make this diagnosis, in the reasoning column, Jacob Salm proposes subjects along these lines.
*************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
American store owner sitting behind a checkout counter
