This week, the Trump administration announced it's expanding its stake in semiconductor manufacturer GlobalFoundries. This brings the government's share of the company to over $2 billion, according to President Donald Trump, and it's only one of roughly three dozen companies in which this White House has acquired a piece of the action. This is a disturbing development for Americans who favor free enterprise and don't want the government to control the means of production.

While it may be a while before the opportunity arises to roll back state intervention in the economy, given the drift of both major parties away from faith in the marketplace, the Cato Institute has launched a project to get the process started.

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$2 Billion Government Stake in One of 35 Once-Private Firms

"The U.S. Department of Commerce will receive equity in GF of approximately four percent, further enabling the American public to share in GF's growth," GlobalFoundries announced Monday in a press release about a U.S.–Japanese initiative to open two new semiconductor manufacturing facilities.

"This brings our total Investments to 1.63 Billion Dollars, and now, the U.S. Government's stake is worth over 2 Billion Dollars," Trump confirmed on Truth Social.

The announcement's triumphant tone isn't necessarily shared by people who wonder what the government's ownership stake in one company will do to regulation and investment in the industry. Will fully private firms challenging a state-backed player experience an even playing field?

In a July CNBC survey of 1,000 U.S. voters, 49 percent of respondents said it is "not appropriate for the federal government to own a portion of a U.S.-based company." Nineteen percent considered it appropriate, and 32 percent had no opinion.

"Washington's expanding involvement in the businesses it regulates threatens the competition and innovation that underpin American prosperity," warns the Cato Institute's Tad DeHaven on the launch of the Restoring Free Enterprise project. "Our project will examine the consequences of that involvement and chart a path toward getting Washington out of the boardroom."

Restoring Free Enterprise's Government Ownership Dashboard shows the U.S. government owning shares in 35 companies. The recent deal with GlobalFoundries comes on top of an earlier equity stake, giving the government 7 percent ownership of the firm. Other big deals include an 8.4 percent stake in Intel, a claim on 20 percent of distributions above $17.5 billion in Westinghouse, and an arrangement granting the U.S. government the right to appoint a director for U.S. Steel and to veto decisions over matters including investment and production.

Why might this be a problem?

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When Government Enters the Market, Competition Is Undermined and Decisions Politicized

In an analysis for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Sujai Shivakumar, Charles Wessner, and Christina Tutino cautioned that direct government ownership could create "conflicts between the role of the government as an investor in a particular company and its role as a regulator (e.g., regarding export controls) of firms across the wider industry." They added that preferential treatment for state-linked forms could "distort competition, stifle innovation, and potentially lead to monopolies or market concentration in strategic sectors."

"Once government crosses the line into equity ownership, the game changes," agreed economist Vance Ginn in a 2025 piece for the American Institute for Economic Research. "It's no longer about setting fair rules of the road—it's about Washington joining the race as a participant. That undermines competition, politicizes corporate decisions, and exposes taxpayers to risks they never agreed to take."

Basically, when the government gets involved in any industry, it complicates matters for the companies in which shares are held, for competitors who must worry that regulators will put their thumbs on the scale to help favored firms, and for the market in general. Overall, government interference of any sort in market transactions does more harm than good, and direct ownership makes things even worse.

"Federal rate controls, excessive taxes, barriers to restructuring, and rigid labor rules weakened private railroads in the mid-20th century, just as automobiles, buses, trucks, and airlines were intensifying competition," Cato's Chris Edwards points out in a case study for the Restoring Free Enterprise Project. Congress then created Amtrak to maintain the passenger train service its red tape had helped strangle, but despite plans for the railroad to be self-sufficient, "it has never earned a profit and has received tens of billions of dollars in subsidies."

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Proposals for Reform, but Is Anybody in D.C. Interested?

The project acknowledges the Trump administration's intention to encourage U.S. manufacturing and to meet strategic defense goals. But it points out that private, profit-seeking firms are what made the U.S. prosperous and dominant in so many fields to begin with. The government should get out of the way of the market if it wants the country to continue to thrive.

As alternatives to state ownership of companies, Restoring Free Enterprise proposes permitting and regulatory reforms that "shorten reviews, remove unnecessary requirements, reform the Jones Act, and recognize out-of-state licenses" for workers. The project also recommends free trade agreements that reduce barriers to international commerce, the removal of export and procurement barriers, tax reforms involving expensing, and immigration reforms that simplify processing and make it easier for foreign-born college graduates to remain in the U.S.

The obstacles to implementing these reforms are substantial. The administration, while criticizing the Democratic Party's growing affection for socialism, itself embraces government ownership of companies, mercantilism, and heavy state intervention in economic decisions and activities. The Democratic Party has long been less market-oriented than the Republicans, and despite the GOP's transformation, a growing share of Democrats are openly socialist advocates for state control.

"American political leaders on the left and right are rebelling against the market-first consensus that dominated Washington for four decades," concluded Axios's Courtenay Brown and Neil Irwin in July. "It's evident in everything from the Trump administration taking government stakes in dozens of private companies to socialist candidates winning Democratic primaries promising a more active government role in the economy."

U.S. politicians are happily adopting damaging policies that are at odds with the country's prosperity-building tradition of free markets. The Restoring Free Enterprise project would reverse that unfortunate trend, but it's not obvious that many people in D.C. are interested in joining the fight.

The post As D.C. Embraces State Economic Control, a Hopeful Project Seeks to Restore Free Enterprise appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Is a college educations worth the hassle and expense? Amid concerns over soaring tuition costs and campus political intolerance, a growing share of Americans aren't convinced that higher education is worthwhile. Academics themselves—the honest ones, anyway—acknowledge that they've squandered a lot of goodwill over the years. Fortunately, it's still possible to get an education that justifies the time and money—though the path doesn't necessarily go through college.

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High Costs and Political Bias Sour Americans on College

"Three in 10 Americans (31%) think a college education is 'very important,' four percentage points below last year's reading, the previous low among the seven times Gallup has asked this question since 1978," the polling firm reported earlier this month. "As recently as 2013, more than twice as many U.S. adults (70%) said college was very important." Gallup adds that "the percentage of U.S. adults who say a college education is 'not too important' has risen from 6% in 2013 to 29% today, while the percentage saying it is 'fairly important' has increased from 23% to 39%."

Higher education plummeted in public esteem for more than one reason. For years, Americans have voiced concern about rising costs and political intolerance on campuses. Last year, even as a Vanderbilt University poll found a slight rebound in favorability toward colleges and universities, the authors noted that "Americans across the political spectrum still are deeply concerned about the affordability of higher education" and "many Americans see political bias in higher education as a serious problem."

The problem was underlined this year when some colleges broke the $100,000 mark in annual costs. "Today, a bachelor's degree at some of America's top schools can cost upward of nearly half a million dollars over four years," reported Business Insider. "And the trend doesn't seem to be slowing down."

Almost at the same time, Vanderbilt released a report warning "there are several worrying tendencies in contemporary academic scholarship in the humanities and social sciences, all of which reflect, to varying degrees, a distinctive form of politicization in which the scholarly enterprise is taken to be subordinate to, or in the service of, political (social or moral) goals beyond the advancement of knowledge and understanding." The goals of this politicization, the study added, "are generally though not exclusively associated with the progressive left."

Unsurprisingly, many Americans balk at paying through the nose so they (or their kids) can spend four years at woke camp. That trepidation undoubtedly contributes to declining college applications at a time when the applicant pool is already shrinking. Many students who do apply to college are applying very modern filters to the schools they'll consider.

"The median student is willing to pay up to $2,617 (12.5%) more to attend a college where the share of students with opposing political views is 10 percentage points lower, suggesting that political identity plays a meaningful role in the college choice process," found a 2025 study from the Annenberg Institute at Brown University which documented "a steady increase in political sorting across American colleges."

This month, a survey from Art & Science Group, a higher education consultancy, found that among college applicants, "the share ruling out colleges solely because of politics in a state rose from 24% in 2023 to 31% in winter 2026 and 34% in summer 2026."

Employers haven't stopped hiring from prestigious colleges and universities. But the definition of "elite" has changed, with some firms leery of traditional Ivy Leagues and preferring southern schools where costs are lower and ideological tolerance still has a place.

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College Still Offers Value for Those Who Choose Wisely

Higher education can still be worthwhile for students who apply due diligence to their selection of schools and fields of study. College offers a good return on the investment of time and money for those who choose wisely.

According to the Education Data Initiative, "an average bachelor's degree has a 560.53% lifetime return on investment with a median lifetime return up to 1,040.14%." But not all degrees are equal. "The most cost-efficient bachelor's degree is in management information systems and statistics, with a lifetime ROI of 1,758.59%," while "a Bachelor of Psychology offers the lowest lifetime ROI at -122.78%, representing a $54,188 loss in degree-based earnings (compared to median earnings with a high school diploma)."

The 10 bachelor's degrees with the highest lifetime earnings are an assortment of engineering disciplines, management information systems and statistics, accounting, finance, economics, mathematics, and the like. But return on investment also depends heavily on the cost of the degree; it's more difficult to get your money's worth when you pay top dollar.

Importantly, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields are also the academic disciplines with the least lopsided political balance among professors.

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Trade Schools Rise as Employer Demand for College Degrees Falls

But college is not the only choice for young Americans planning their futures. According to a 2025 Harris survey for the American Staffing Association, more Americans now recommend that graduating high school seniors go to trade school (33 percent) than recommend college (28 percent).

Trade schools cost a fraction of what four-year colleges cost. And they satisfy a growing demand for skilled workers.

"Of the 124 skilled trades occupations, 86 are projected to grow or hold steady, and more than 600,000 net new positions are projected through 2035," the Alliance for Skilled Trades, a coalition of companies that depend on trades people, notes in a recent report. "Employers will need to fill about 1.7 million openings each year."

Note that new positions are opening even as the population of job-market entrants shrinks.

And employers increasingly value experience and in-house training over college degrees of dubious value. Last year, a quarter of employers reported that they were eliminating requirements for bachelor's degrees among new hires.

Higher education still has a role to play. But "education" doesn't have to mean four years of high tuition. It can be a certification program or trade school that launches graduates into a productive life.

After decades of being the default path for many Americans, colleges and universities have alienated people with high prices and intolerant ideological environments. They still have a lot to offer, but now they have to compete with alternatives for the time and money of a skeptical public.

The post College Still Has a Future, but It's No Longer the Default Choice appeared first on Reason Magazine.