Privatizing the Republic: Trump’s Plan to Sell Off the State and Enclose the Future

Trump’s economic agenda is no longer about deregulation—it’s about dismantling the state itself. In this sharp commentary, economist Michael Hudson unpacks how Trump’s vision draws from Thatcherite austerity and Russia’s kleptocratic privatization of the 1990s. With Elon Musk and billionaire donors at his side, the plan is to turn public goods—parks, post offices, health care—into profit machines for monopolists. GDP would be redefined to ignore the shrinking public sector, while natural monopolies like water and power are handed to financiers. Hudson warns: this is neoliberalism on steroids, the final enclosure of the commons, and the creation of a corporate state where citizenship becomes subservient to shareholder returns. If history is any guide, the great fortunes of the future will be built not through innovation—but through privatizing what we already own.