The Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed earlier this month a resolution that “condemns and denounces socialism in all its forms, including the Democratic Socialists of America, and opposes the implementation of socialist policies in the United States.” The vote was 220-192, with eight Democrats voting “aye” and zero Republicans voting “nay.” The resolution said that “socialist ideology necessitates a concentration of power that has, time and time again, collapsed into communist regimes, totalitarian rule, and repressive dictatorships” and “has repeatedly led to famine and mass murders, and the killing of over 100,000,000 people worldwide.”
By equating democratic socialism with communism, the resolution was intended to create voter hysteria over the Democrats’ nomination of about eight democratic socialists in the midterm congressional elections. It was also a stalking horse for the SAVE Act, Trump’s desperate attempt to disenfranchise Democratic voters in advance of the midterms. Voter disenfranchisement has nothing at all to do with opposing socialism, so set that aside. What interests me is that the House’s condemnation of socialism made no mention of the 30 companies in which President Donald Trump has acquired an ownership stake for the federal government during his second term. Trump’s got his tiny fingers on what The Communist Manifesto famously called “the means of production.” The number of companies in which the government acquired a stake during the Democratic presidency of Joe Biden was zero.
Because the shares in those 30 companies, some purchased and some expropriated, were acquired without input from Congress, and because the legal language for at least one of these acquisitions mentions Trump by name, as if “Donald J. Trump” were synonymous with “United States government,” we might call Trump’s variety undemocratic socialism. I’ve called it fascist corporatism because it seems to take a leaf from Benito Mussolini’s “Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato” (“Everything within the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State”). In its current iteration, though, it’s more like Tutto nello Trump, nienta al di fuori della Trump, nulla contro lo Trump.
Yet another possible way to describe Trump’s covetous attitude toward the means of production is Soviet-style socialism, which is to say communism. It remains an open question whether that’s fair because we don’t yet know whether Trump will mimic the Soviet practice of spouting pro-worker propaganda while harboring a cynical indifference to the proletariat’s actual welfare. But given Trump’s anti-worker policies thus far, I think the answer will turn out to be: He will. We’ll know more by the end of September, when a one-month extension of contract negotiations between the United Steelworkers and United States Steel expires.
Allow me to explain. As a condition of President Donald Trump approving in June 2025 Nippon Steel’s acquisition of U.S. Steel, the United States acquired something called a “golden share” in U.S. Steel. As I explained at the time, a golden share is a share in a publicly-held corporation that grants the shareholder unilateral power to overrule management on certain matters. It was invented by the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as a condition for privatizing government-owned companies like British Airways and British Steel. The golden share in these instances allowed the British government to veto any planned sale of these assets to foreign companies. That makes Thatcher’s golden shares the opposite of Trump’s, which was intended to allow the sale of U.S. Steel to a foreign company. There’s also a difference in directionality. Unlike Thatcher, Trump is nationalizing rather than privatizing.
But like Thatcher’s golden shares, Trump’s is justified on conservative grounds of protecting national security. In the case of U.S. Steel, any national security justification is bullshit. Nippon Steel’s acquisition of U.S. Steel never threatened national security because U.S. Steel is no longer the dominant economic player that it was in the 1950s. At least three other American steel companies bring in more revenue, and two employ significantly more workers. But the political symbolism of the looming sale was sufficiently powerful to persuade President Joe Biden to bar the sale. Trump wasn’t wrong to reverse Biden’s decision. But in doing so he played his own kind of political game by showily demanding the power to protect U.S. Steel’s workforce from plant closings, underinvestment, offshoring, and wage cuts.
The golden share was codified in a national security agreement that was never made public. But a June 2025 tweet by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick conveyed the gist, and a U.S. Steel filing that same month to the Securities and Exchange Commission provided more detail. Indeed, the wording in the U.S. Steel filing is very likely identical to wording in the national security agreement, because it wouldn’t make sense to describe a legal obligation with one set of words in one document and another set of words in another document.
The question now, as labor and management duke it out over a new U.S. Steel contract, is whether Trump has any interest in exercising the power granted by that golden share to protect workers’ interests. Early signs indicate that he does not.
Negotiations between the United Steelworkers and U.S. Steel began in late July and were set to expire at the end of August. With no agreement in hand, the negotiators extended talks another 30 days. That isn’t uncommon, and the talks are proceeding in orderly fashion. The main sticking point is whether U.S. Steel’s new owner, Nippon, will keep workers’ health insurance costs low. U.S. Steel’s opening bid was an impressive-sounding 18.2 percent over the next five years and a $4000 bonus when the contract is ratified. But on health care, U.S. Steel said that if health insurance costs exceed 3 percent, a labor-management committee will “work together to identify cost-saving opportunities.” If no such savings can be found, the company will impose “additional employee costs.”
That didn’t go down well with the Steelworkers. Their lead negotiator, Bernie Hall, told me that years ago labor and management agreed to make controlling health costs a priority in contract negotiations. To that end, Hall said, “sacrifices were made over the years” by workers, such as foregoing a pay raise over multiple years. “We have zero interest,” Hall said, in any plan that limits to 3 percent management’s commitment to absorbing health cost increases.
The golden share agreement, as outlined in U.S. Steel’s June 2025 filing, says Nippon may not, without “the written consent of Donald J. Trump” or his designee, or of any successors, “reduce the base salary of employees” prior to June 18, 2030. Health insurance benefits exist apart from base salary, but they affect total compensation, and any effort to reduce them ought to attract notice from the Commerce officials Trump has designated to represent him on the golden share. These are William Kimmitt, who’s Commerce undersecretary for international trade, and David Shapiro, chief counsel for Commerce’s new Investment Accelerator.
The choice of these two individuals is telling. Neither Kimmitt nor Shapiro wastes much of his day worrying about the American worker. The undersecretary for international trade advises the Commerce secretary on trade and global competitiveness, while the Investment Accelerator exists to clear away regulatory barriers to billion-dollar-plus new ventures in the United States. Trump outlined the two men’s respective duties in a November 2025 letter published in the Federal Register. Kimmitt, the letter said, will “closely monitor U.S. Steel and its compliance” with the golden share agreement, and Shapiro will sit on U.S. Steel’s board.
I find no evidence that either Kimmitt or Shapiro is paying the slightest attention to U.S. Steel’s labor contract negotiations. My queries on this question to the Commerce department, by telephone and email, went unanswered. My queries on this question to U.S. Steel, by telephone and email, also drew no answer; the company replied only with this link to U.S. Steel’s opening bid. That leaves the Steelworkers. Hall said he hadn’t heard from Kimmitt, Shapiro, or anyone else in the Trump administration. Nor had he seen any evidence that they’re following the negotiations. “From our perspective,” Hall said of the golden share, “while it’s a nice shiny thing, it doesn’t provide the kind of commitments that these workers need and that we’re demanding…. It’s too open-ended.” For example, Hall explained, while the agreement sets yearly minimums for investments at various plants, it doesn’t stipulate which projects should get the investment. That’s left to the union to negotiate.
The most unsettling aspect of the golden share agreement is how it defines a “force majeure” (i.e., act of God) event that would free U.S. Steel from its stated obligations. Force majeure is defined in the SEC document in some typical ways—natural disasters, pandemics, war, terrorism—but also in some atypical ways—”strikes, lockouts, boycotts, picketing, labor disturbances.” A lockout is an action initiated by the employer, so conceivably U.S. Steel could void the the golden share strictures merely by executing this “act of God.” Or, the United States government could void the golden-share agreement just because a few workers had the temerity to wave protest signs. And as Bloomberg Law’s George Weycamp observed earlier this month, the golden share language does nothing to prevent U.S. Steel from shifting work to non-union plants.
Even so, the timing of these union contract negotiations is very awkward for Trump. If September 30 arrives and U.S. Steel and the United Steelworkers have no deal, extensions will likely be limited to 48 hours and the airing of differences will grow more heated. Should the Trump administration remain on the sidelines, Democrats will have a powerful issue on which to campaign for working-class midterm votes. This president said he’d protect American workers, they can say, but look how he’s selling steelworkers out! Or: Trump gave U.S. Steel to a foreign corporation and we got nothing in return! Or simply: What a phony!
It could go even worse for Trump if U.S. Steel used a lockout or he used a strike as an excuse to kill the golden-share agreement. The resulting protests would definitely help Democrats win elections to the House and Senate. Trump’s been saying he hates socialism while practicing it. Now he may start to hate practicing socialism, too.
