Joel Dodge

The Cases for Government Equity Stakes Over the last few months, the second Trump administration has embarked upon a spree of deals taking equity stakes in private companies.

Good post from @joeldodge07.bsky.social running down the reasons for governments to take equity stakes in companies.
vanderbiltpolicyaccelerator.substack.com/p/the-cases-...

Great piece on how Trump’s R&D austerity and privatization moves amount to negative industrial policy.

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Last week, Jamie Dimon announced JPMorganChase was creating a Trump-aligned $1.5 trillion industrial policy fund.

In a new post for Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator's Substack, I explain the perils of this kind of privatized industrial policy.

vanderbiltpolicyaccelerator.substack.com/p/the-perils...

From me in @lpeblog.bsky.social today:

The lesson of the US investment in Intel is "public capital without accountability. The result is not sovereign wealth but corporate capture—an arrangement that entrenches incumbent power while eroding the state’s ability to direct economic development."

L'etat, c'est Trump Trump's version of "state capitalism" is just another facet of his self-dealing authoritarianism. It may enrich his family but will beggar the economy.

I talked to the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator’s Joel Dodge about Trump’s unique brand of authoritarian-flavored industrial policy for this week’s @washingtonmonthly.com roundup:

open.substack.com/pub/washingt...

10/ The transition will happen with or without US participation. By withdrawing from these industries and blocking allies from Chinese partnerships, America risks becoming a bystander to the biggest economic transformation of our time.

The Green Marshall Plan is happening. It’s just being led by China.

Trump’s Industrial Policy: What’s Right and Wrong Trump’s industrial policy includes equity stakes, profit-sharing, and golden shares in major corporations. The outcome could be disastrous.

The president uses government leverage to extract equity stakes, profit-sharing deals, and special voting rights from major corporations. These are familiar tools—but Trump’s unchecked dealmaking could be disastrous.

washingtonmonthly.com/2025/09/03/t...

Industrial policies like public ownership of corporate equity are powerful means of aligning corporate actions with gov priorities—but they can thus also become tools for consolidating authoritarian power. Rather than rejecting policies outright, we need better discussions on democratic guardrails

Trump’s Industrial Policy: What’s Right and Wrong Trump’s industrial policy includes equity stakes, profit-sharing, and golden shares in major corporations. The outcome could be disastrous.

Ultimately, the question is whether the next era of industrial policy is dominated by a unitary executive, or democratized by all branches of government.

washingtonmonthly.com/2025/09/03/t...

8/8

But there’s also Path #2: Industrial Policy Checked and Balanced. Congress and the courts ought to play a role in mitigating the dangers and pitfalls of Trump’s approach. 7/8

Indeed, future Democratic presidents may find a lot to like in the Trump-inflected industrial policy toolkit they inherit. 6/8

There are two paths forward:
Path #1: Industrial Policy Unleashed. The path of no resistance, where political inertia will cement Trump’s style of economic dealmaking. 5/8

The emerging “industrial policy with Trumpist characteristics” bears a number of specific traits:
-Personalist power-grabbing
-Government stakes in companies
-Quid-pro-quo transactionalism
-Leverage power plays
-Legal adventurism
4/8

Trump injected gov’t into private business through a number of deals during this Big State Summer, including with US Steel, MP Materials, Japan, Nvidia, and Intel. 3/8

Trump’s Industrial Policy: What’s Right and Wrong Trump’s industrial policy includes equity stakes, profit-sharing, and golden shares in major corporations. The outcome could be disastrous.

Read the full piece here: washingtonmonthly.com/2025/09/03/t... 2/8

I did a deep dive for the @washingtonmonthly.com taking stock of the emerging Trump II industrial policy and where it might be headed. Link below: 🧵1/8

Is the Republican Party a Chinese Communist Conspiracy? The Senate GOP just voted to destroy the economies of their own districts and hand 21st century industry to a foreign adversary.

This theory from @ryanlcooper.com is perhaps the only sensible explanation for the US whipsawing from green industrial policy to brown industrial policy.

prospect.org/environment/...

The industrial policy see-saw: One party tries to use it to reduce carbon emissions, the other party switches to a version that increases them.

U.S. Steel and Nippon Steel Say Their ‘Partnership’ Is Sealed

👀 “The deal will also give the U.S. government a “golden share” in the company, a rarely used practice through which the government takes a stake in company.”

www.nytimes.com/2025/06/13/b...

In Georgia, Republicans Vote to Kill Green Jobs but Face Little Fallout

The IRA’s vulnerability in a nutshell:

“Until we see somebody get hired, until somebody goes to Kroger’s and tells their friend in the produce section, ‘Hey, I just got a job there,’ it’s not real yet”

www.nytimes.com/2025/06/07/c...

Great piece! I wrote a related "everything-bagel" defense in Wash Monthly recently: washingtonmonthly.com/2025/04/24/i...

BTW, I work on industrial policy at the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator. Would love to connect some time - can message me or email at joel.t.dodge at vanderbilt dot edu

MAGA declinism

I suspect this is true and if so it is just an epically, fatefully, cosmically awful decision that will condemn this country to long-term decline.

Excited to share that my new paper, The Federal Reserve’s Forgotten Credit Mandate, was just published in Harvard Law Review! 🚨It argues that we are misinterpreting the Fed’s statutory mandate. 1/22

The Debate That Will Determine How Democrats Govern Next Time Did the party lose in 2024 despite Joe Biden’s economic approach, or because of it?

"[P]ost-neoliberalism was a healthy correction to an economic system that was often too deferential to markets & too inattentive to the realities of politics. Abandoning it over its failures would be easy; the challenge is to find a way to build on its successes."

💯 by Roge Karma @theatlantic.com

U.S. and China Agree to Temporarily Slash Tariffs in Bid to Defuse Trade War

“While a temporary reprieve from the shockingly high tariffs is cause for celebration for businesses in both countries, the repercussions will linger. Businesses will likely encounter a flood of pent-up demand, leading to soaring transport prices”

www.nytimes.com/2025/05/12/b...

My piece in @thehill.com:

🐓Egg companies are using avian flu as an excuse to bilk consumers

💰Those companies are making record profits

🫴And they’re getting taxpayer-funded USDA bailouts

The government should outlaw price-gouging by companies getting public subsidies

thehill.com/opinion/camp...

Building a World Without Carbon Requires Megaproject Thinking - Roosevelt Institute One of the biggest mistakes we can make in the current moment is to assume climate change is only an environmental problem—one that we will address at some time in the future. Climate change is an eve...

Great idea from @costasamaras.com @rooseveltinstitute.org for a "Federal Reserve for tracking decarbonization" to "analyze how well the economy is making progress toward decarbonization outcomes, identify risks to that progress & make plans to course correct."

rooseveltinstitute.org/blog/buildin...