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Presidential Issues: Corporate Welfare

Corporate Welfare

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Donald Trump: the ‘Anti-Corporatist’ Candidate?

December 16, 2015

By Michael Tanner

Of all the mystical qualities that [Donald] Trump supporters attribute to their candidate, the one I find most curious is that Trump is the “anti-corporatist” candidate.

Trump? “Anti-corporatist”? Really?

If there were a corporatist hall of fame, Trump’s name should be emblazoned across the front in huge red letters, the way it is on his casinos. We are, after all, talking about a candidate who has just finished attacking his leading rival, Ted Cruz, for insufficient devotion to ethanol subsidies. This is not an aberration. Trump has rarely met a proposal for corporate welfare that he didn’t love.

Republicans have been highly critical of the Obama administration’s propensity to throw money at so-called “green energy” companies. But Trump is just as big a supporter of taxpayer subsidies for alternative energy sources. Defending his support of subsidies for wind turbines, for instance, Trump explained that “you need subsidies” because it can be hard for wind to be competitive in energy production, particularly when prices for fossil fuels are so low.

Read the full article at the Cato Institute: Donald Trump: the ‘Anti-Corporatist’ Candidate?

Issue Categories : Corporate Welfare, Donald Trump