October 13, 2025 • 9 mins
WHY IS THE US GOVERNMENT BUYING BUSINESSES? The federal government keeps buying "shares" of certain businesses that Trump has decided have some national security implications and I don't like it. Neither does Eric Boehm for Reason.com as he wrote about why this is a bad idea here. We will discuss today at 12:30.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Joining me now to talk about something completely different. Eric
Bam writes for Reason dot com, the libertarian site that
does phenomenal stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Connect. Are you guys are so connected with Cato?
Speaker 3 (00:12):
Right? We're not affiliated in any way with Cato, but
I'm a big fan of people who work over there.
Speaker 4 (00:19):
I work a lot.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
So for some reason I thought there was a connection there.
But nonetheless, last week Eric, he wrote a great column article,
whatever you want to call it, about this new thing
that Donald Trump is doing that I genuinely really really
really hate, and that is we're now apparently the US
government is buying stakes in private companies.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Give me a little bit about that.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Yeah, so the immedia, Well, first of all, thanks for
having me on.
Speaker 4 (00:48):
Wonderful to be with you here.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
The immediate reason for writing that piece last week was
this announcement. I think it really flew on at the radar.
Obviously there's some bigger news out there in the past week,
but that the White House announced that they were going
to basically take a stake in this company.
Speaker 4 (01:04):
Called Trilogy Medals.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
There's a thirty five million dollar quote unquote investment being
made by the Trump administration and in return the company,
the federal government will now own ten percent of the company.
Trilogy Medals is not a company I'd ever heard of before.
It's not like US Steel, right, This is not a big,
well established, well known company. They're a mining company that
(01:26):
operates in Alaska. They mine copper and cobalt and some
other They would like to mine more things in Alaska.
And so this deal is part of the Trump administration's
attempt to go after not just those rare earth materials
and metals that we hear about so much, but also
just like really critical materials like cobalt and copper that
go into any sort of advanced electronics, batteries, AI tech,
(01:50):
all of that. So, you know, I think we could
debate the importance of the federal government having say, or
making some influence or making some quote unquote investment subsidies
to companies like this, but I think you really it
becomes a whole different conversation when you start talking about
giving a company money in exchange for the government actually
(02:10):
owning a share of the company. And we've seen this
now a few times, and like you, I am alarmed
by this.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Well, I mean, Eric, let me just play Devil's advocate.
I'll put my devil's advocate voice. But Eric, who would
not want the advice of a machine that runs like
the US federal government in your business?
Speaker 2 (02:28):
They can absolutely yeah, right, exactly.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
And this is the point I made in the piece,
is that like, imagine, you know, the most efficient and
effective entity in the world coming in and saying we're
going to now run ten percent of your company.
Speaker 4 (02:39):
Right, I mean, we're in the middle of a government shutdown.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
The government can't pass its own budget, the most basic
thing you can, the most basic thing that it has
to do or supposed to do, every year, and it
routinely fails to do this. I think that even before
you get to some of the philosophical objections that a
libertarian like me might have to the government running a company,
before you even get to some of the economic or
(03:04):
historical examples of how this has gone very poorly in
the past, of which there are many, I think you
just have to ask the most the most basic practical
question is like, well, wait a minute, wouldn't Trilogy Medals
do a better job of doing the thing it's supposed
to do if it didn't have to also be concerned
about what the government wanted? A government that again at
(03:24):
the moment is not even fully operating or fully functional.
So yeah, I think there's a lot of reasons to
question the wisdom of a maneuver like this.
Speaker 4 (03:33):
Again, even if even if you're.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
Somebody who and I mean I can agree with this
on this point, that like we should be mining more
of these essential medals, like that's that's a critical thing
for the United States to be able to do. But
I think you need to then ask the next question
of is this the best way to do it?
Speaker 4 (03:48):
I think the answer is clearly no.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Well, Eric, you know, there's a couple different ways to
do this.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
And I am I call myself a libreservative, right, I
probably lean a little more right than your average libertarian.
But ultimately there are industry and rare earth metals is
increasingly becoming one of them, steal as one of them,
oil and gas production. These are necessary to go onto
a war footing, right, They really are matters of national security.
I was talking the other day about the fact that
(04:13):
if China rolls into Taiwan, what does that do for
the chip industry that we rely on for all of
our new next gen weaponry, all of our next gen
fighters have all of this incredible technology in them. So
I think you could make the argument that there are
industries that need some sort of and I hate to
say it protection.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
So they're on a war footing if we need them
on a war footing.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Right, But this isn't the wrong way to do it, right,
Do it through incentives, Do it through like lowering tax
I mean, how does a more pure libertarian look at
what I just said?
Speaker 2 (04:46):
How do you thread that needle?
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Yeah? I mean I would say the first thing. And
this is actually something Trump has also done. So this
is the part. You know, it's kind of like a
to his credit, to his detriment point here, but to
his credit. The other thing the administration announced it that
they were streamlining the permits. They were going to move
on some things that the bid Deministration had been really
slow walking or holding up the permits for this company to.
Speaker 4 (05:08):
Do the mining. That sounds to me like exactly what
we would want to do, right.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
Who's the expert in getting materials out of the ground
so that we can use them in industry?
Speaker 4 (05:17):
Is it the federal government or is it a mining company? Well,
it's obviously it's the mining company.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
Right, So make it easier for that company for all
companies to do the things they need to do to
provide these materials to American industry, to the American military,
to whomever.
Speaker 4 (05:32):
Right, that's the thing we should be focused on.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
And again Trump, yes, doing some of that, moving these
permits along, speeding up some of the necessary paperwork to
start building a road and a part of really rural
far flow in Alaska so that we can have the
infrastructure in place so that the mining company can do
the thing. It's good at all of that. I think
any libertarian would say, yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 4 (05:54):
More of that.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
Please get the government out of the way, let the
business do what it does best.
Speaker 4 (05:57):
The thing then that.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
You have to come back to is like, okay, in
exchange for those things, the Trump administration wants ten percent
stake in the company. And this is the same playbook
we've seen them run now with Intel and with US Steel,
and there's a few other examples too, And it's like
that cuts immediately against the benefits that you see from
you know, getting from easing some of the regulations or
(06:19):
doing some of.
Speaker 4 (06:19):
The permitting reform that they've done.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
Once you start putting the government in charge, I think
the obvious question to ask is like well, what happens
if there's a you know, a Biden type administration next
right now, not only can they throw up regulatory burdens
or regulatory hurdles or create permitting problems, but they can
literally have oversight to the company's board, Like, how does
(06:41):
that change the incentives for a business like this going forward?
And I think that's that's where this ten percent or
the government being involved in the business on any level
becomes problematic, because then the business has to be oriented
towards what does the current administration want me to do,
as opposed to what they should be oriented towards, which
is how do I most effectively and efficiently get stuff
(07:03):
out of the ground for other people to use.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Oh, the way that this could be so easily politicized
in the sense that you you know, we already know
that the federal government and politicians use the tax code
to dole out favored status, right this will be the
next This will be like the American Express black card
for businesses with the admitted you know, with government, where
they're just gonna end up going to government and getting
(07:28):
a chunk of money and then what do we get back.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
I just this is so bad, it's so bad.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
And I love the way Trump leverages that deal making
with like Ukraine, right, like, Oh, we're gonna come help you,
but you're gonna give us rare, rare minerals. We're gonna
this is our deal. I love that leverage. I don't
like it when I feel like he's leveraging it against
the American people.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
And that's how this feels.
Speaker 4 (07:52):
Yeah, I think that's exactly right.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
When you're talking country versus country, obviously, that's a different
kind of relationship, right with the federal government the United States,
when it is negotiating with the government of Ukraine, or
the government of Israel, or the government of China, anybody
in the rest of the world. Right, that's obviously how
those types of arrangements have to work. It's all about leverage.
But when you're talking about versus a company that operates
(08:14):
in the United States, that's.
Speaker 4 (08:16):
A very different dynamic.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
The federal government can kind of exert whatever pressure it
wants in that and that business now going forward, has
to take that into account. There's another thing to think
about here too that I think we should also talk about,
which is what if this is a bad bet? What
if trilogy medals isn't the most efficient or the best
mining company out the rate. They've now been given a
huge advantage over all of their competitors. And we'll wait
(08:38):
a minute, What if one of their competitors is actually
better at this What if ten years from now we
find out that we maybe should have backed a different horse.
And that's why the government shouldn't be backing any horse
at all. The government should be creating a level playing
field and trying to reduce the taxes and regulations and
permits and difficulties that all businesses face, and then let
the best competitor win in the marketplace. And that's again,
(09:00):
that's not what we're seeing here. We're seeing the government
picking winners and losers, in this case, picking this one
mining company.
Speaker 4 (09:07):
In Alaska, and that I don't know.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
I worry that that's just not the right outcome because
we can't know the future well.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
And Eric, I'll add this before I let you go,
And that is it's more than that.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
In my mind. It is.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
Now, what if Trilogy Metals starts to go south? Are
we now going to because we're now we have an
ownership's sake? Are we going to prop up a failing
company that otherwise would have just gone away.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
There's a lot of questions.
Speaker 3 (09:30):
You've seen that, Yeah, yeah, you've seen that time and
time again with government owned companies throughout history too, Like
that's always the case. They throw more money after them
because they can't be allowed to fail.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Right, exactly.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
Ericbame from Reason dot Com, thank you so much for
your time today.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
Super interesting article.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
I look forward to the longer article about this in
the next episode of the magazine.
Speaker 4 (09:50):
Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
All right, that's Eric Bame with Reason dot Com. We
will be back right after this
Joining me now to talk about something completely different. Eric
Bam writes for Reason dot com, the libertarian site that
does phenomenal stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Connect. Are you guys are so connected with Cato?
Speaker 3 (00:12):
Right? We're not affiliated in any way with Cato, but
I'm a big fan of people who work over there.
Speaker 4 (00:19):
I work a lot.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
So for some reason I thought there was a connection there.
But nonetheless, last week Eric, he wrote a great column article,
whatever you want to call it, about this new thing
that Donald Trump is doing that I genuinely really really
really hate, and that is we're now apparently the US
government is buying stakes in private companies.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Give me a little bit about that.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Yeah, so the immedia, Well, first of all, thanks for
having me on.
Speaker 4 (00:48):
Wonderful to be with you here.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
The immediate reason for writing that piece last week was
this announcement. I think it really flew on at the radar.
Obviously there's some bigger news out there in the past week,
but that the White House announced that they were going
to basically take a stake in this company.
Speaker 4 (01:04):
Called Trilogy Medals.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
There's a thirty five million dollar quote unquote investment being
made by the Trump administration and in return the company,
the federal government will now own ten percent of the company.
Trilogy Medals is not a company I'd ever heard of before.
It's not like US Steel, right, This is not a big,
well established, well known company. They're a mining company that
(01:26):
operates in Alaska. They mine copper and cobalt and some
other They would like to mine more things in Alaska.
And so this deal is part of the Trump administration's
attempt to go after not just those rare earth materials
and metals that we hear about so much, but also
just like really critical materials like cobalt and copper that
go into any sort of advanced electronics, batteries, AI tech,
(01:50):
all of that. So, you know, I think we could
debate the importance of the federal government having say, or
making some influence or making some quote unquote investment subsidies
to companies like this, but I think you really it
becomes a whole different conversation when you start talking about
giving a company money in exchange for the government actually
(02:10):
owning a share of the company. And we've seen this
now a few times, and like you, I am alarmed
by this.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Well, I mean, Eric, let me just play Devil's advocate.
I'll put my devil's advocate voice. But Eric, who would
not want the advice of a machine that runs like
the US federal government in your business?
Speaker 2 (02:28):
They can absolutely yeah, right, exactly.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
And this is the point I made in the piece,
is that like, imagine, you know, the most efficient and
effective entity in the world coming in and saying we're
going to now run ten percent of your company.
Speaker 4 (02:39):
Right, I mean, we're in the middle of a government shutdown.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
The government can't pass its own budget, the most basic
thing you can, the most basic thing that it has
to do or supposed to do, every year, and it
routinely fails to do this. I think that even before
you get to some of the philosophical objections that a
libertarian like me might have to the government running a company,
before you even get to some of the economic or
(03:04):
historical examples of how this has gone very poorly in
the past, of which there are many, I think you
just have to ask the most the most basic practical
question is like, well, wait a minute, wouldn't Trilogy Medals
do a better job of doing the thing it's supposed
to do if it didn't have to also be concerned
about what the government wanted? A government that again at
(03:24):
the moment is not even fully operating or fully functional.
So yeah, I think there's a lot of reasons to
question the wisdom of a maneuver like this.
Speaker 4 (03:33):
Again, even if even if you're.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
Somebody who and I mean I can agree with this
on this point, that like we should be mining more
of these essential medals, like that's that's a critical thing
for the United States to be able to do. But
I think you need to then ask the next question
of is this the best way to do it?
Speaker 4 (03:48):
I think the answer is clearly no.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Well, Eric, you know, there's a couple different ways to
do this.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
And I am I call myself a libreservative, right, I
probably lean a little more right than your average libertarian.
But ultimately there are industry and rare earth metals is
increasingly becoming one of them, steal as one of them,
oil and gas production. These are necessary to go onto
a war footing, right, They really are matters of national security.
I was talking the other day about the fact that
(04:13):
if China rolls into Taiwan, what does that do for
the chip industry that we rely on for all of
our new next gen weaponry, all of our next gen
fighters have all of this incredible technology in them. So
I think you could make the argument that there are
industries that need some sort of and I hate to
say it protection.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
So they're on a war footing if we need them
on a war footing.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Right, But this isn't the wrong way to do it, right,
Do it through incentives, Do it through like lowering tax
I mean, how does a more pure libertarian look at
what I just said?
Speaker 2 (04:46):
How do you thread that needle?
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Yeah? I mean I would say the first thing. And
this is actually something Trump has also done. So this
is the part. You know, it's kind of like a
to his credit, to his detriment point here, but to
his credit. The other thing the administration announced it that
they were streamlining the permits. They were going to move
on some things that the bid Deministration had been really
slow walking or holding up the permits for this company to.
Speaker 4 (05:08):
Do the mining. That sounds to me like exactly what
we would want to do, right.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
Who's the expert in getting materials out of the ground
so that we can use them in industry?
Speaker 4 (05:17):
Is it the federal government or is it a mining company? Well,
it's obviously it's the mining company.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
Right, So make it easier for that company for all
companies to do the things they need to do to
provide these materials to American industry, to the American military,
to whomever.
Speaker 4 (05:32):
Right, that's the thing we should be focused on.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
And again Trump, yes, doing some of that, moving these
permits along, speeding up some of the necessary paperwork to
start building a road and a part of really rural
far flow in Alaska so that we can have the
infrastructure in place so that the mining company can do
the thing. It's good at all of that. I think
any libertarian would say, yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 4 (05:54):
More of that.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
Please get the government out of the way, let the
business do what it does best.
Speaker 4 (05:57):
The thing then that.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
You have to come back to is like, okay, in
exchange for those things, the Trump administration wants ten percent
stake in the company. And this is the same playbook
we've seen them run now with Intel and with US Steel,
and there's a few other examples too, And it's like
that cuts immediately against the benefits that you see from
you know, getting from easing some of the regulations or
(06:19):
doing some of.
Speaker 4 (06:19):
The permitting reform that they've done.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
Once you start putting the government in charge, I think
the obvious question to ask is like well, what happens
if there's a you know, a Biden type administration next
right now, not only can they throw up regulatory burdens
or regulatory hurdles or create permitting problems, but they can
literally have oversight to the company's board, Like, how does
(06:41):
that change the incentives for a business like this going forward?
And I think that's that's where this ten percent or
the government being involved in the business on any level
becomes problematic, because then the business has to be oriented
towards what does the current administration want me to do,
as opposed to what they should be oriented towards, which
is how do I most effectively and efficiently get stuff
(07:03):
out of the ground for other people to use.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Oh, the way that this could be so easily politicized
in the sense that you you know, we already know
that the federal government and politicians use the tax code
to dole out favored status, right this will be the
next This will be like the American Express black card
for businesses with the admitted you know, with government, where
they're just gonna end up going to government and getting
(07:28):
a chunk of money and then what do we get back.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
I just this is so bad, it's so bad.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
And I love the way Trump leverages that deal making
with like Ukraine, right, like, Oh, we're gonna come help you,
but you're gonna give us rare, rare minerals. We're gonna
this is our deal. I love that leverage. I don't
like it when I feel like he's leveraging it against
the American people.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
And that's how this feels.
Speaker 4 (07:52):
Yeah, I think that's exactly right.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
When you're talking country versus country, obviously, that's a different
kind of relationship, right with the federal government the United States,
when it is negotiating with the government of Ukraine, or
the government of Israel, or the government of China, anybody
in the rest of the world. Right, that's obviously how
those types of arrangements have to work. It's all about leverage.
But when you're talking about versus a company that operates
(08:14):
in the United States, that's.
Speaker 4 (08:16):
A very different dynamic.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
The federal government can kind of exert whatever pressure it
wants in that and that business now going forward, has
to take that into account. There's another thing to think
about here too that I think we should also talk about,
which is what if this is a bad bet? What
if trilogy medals isn't the most efficient or the best
mining company out the rate. They've now been given a
huge advantage over all of their competitors. And we'll wait
(08:38):
a minute, What if one of their competitors is actually
better at this What if ten years from now we
find out that we maybe should have backed a different horse.
And that's why the government shouldn't be backing any horse
at all. The government should be creating a level playing
field and trying to reduce the taxes and regulations and
permits and difficulties that all businesses face, and then let
the best competitor win in the marketplace. And that's again,
(09:00):
that's not what we're seeing here. We're seeing the government
picking winners and losers, in this case, picking this one
mining company.
Speaker 4 (09:07):
In Alaska, and that I don't know.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
I worry that that's just not the right outcome because
we can't know the future well.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
And Eric, I'll add this before I let you go,
And that is it's more than that.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
In my mind. It is.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
Now, what if Trilogy Metals starts to go south? Are
we now going to because we're now we have an
ownership's sake? Are we going to prop up a failing
company that otherwise would have just gone away.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
There's a lot of questions.
Speaker 3 (09:30):
You've seen that, Yeah, yeah, you've seen that time and
time again with government owned companies throughout history too, Like
that's always the case. They throw more money after them
because they can't be allowed to fail.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Right, exactly.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
Ericbame from Reason dot Com, thank you so much for
your time today.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
Super interesting article.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
I look forward to the longer article about this in
the next episode of the magazine.
Speaker 4 (09:50):
Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
All right, that's Eric Bame with Reason dot Com. We
will be back right after this
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