Trump’s Venezuelan Crony Capitalism

The following is published from an X thread from Dr. Peter Klein, Mises Senior Fellow.

Trump justifies his war on Venezuela by saying that “they” stole “our” oil. Unpacking this claim gives us insight into Trump’s version of crony capitalism – a system of private ownership in which the state intervenes to promote the interests of politically connected firms.

The Statism of Donald Trump

Many libertarians hope that Donald Trump would favor many free market policies. The claim by these libertarians was that, aside from obvious exceptions like eminent domain and tariffs, he was basically sympathetic to the free market. Unfortunately, these hopes have not been fulfilled, and in this week’s article, I’ll try to show this. Before going ahead, though, I’d like to avert a possible misunderstanding. The issue we have to deal with is Trump’s policy, not whether he was a marginally more acceptable choice for president than his Democratic Party opponent, the “woke” Kamala Harris.