In the United States, the economic system is usually described with one word, capitalism.

Historically, the United States was about as close to pure capitalism as you could get.

Greg Ip is the Wall Street Journal's chief economics commentator.

He says that for the past decade or so, the country has been second-guessing its commitment

to free markets.

The United States, I believe, in the last 10 or 15 years, has migrated away from the pure

free market model.

There's bipartisan disillusionment with the free market capitalism model that we had

sought to pursue for so many years.

There's a view, for example, that the unquestioned embrace of free trade led to the offshoring of very good manufacturing jobs,

that it left the U.S. behind in sort of like critical areas, like semiconductors and so forth,

where it didn't invest in the future.

And recently, Greg says, that view has been gaining traction.

The government, especially under Trump, has been taking a greater and greater role in directing the economy,

from weighing in on a tech CEO's job, to taking a stake in a steel company and a rare earth mineral company, to

striking deals with computer chip manufacturers.

And Greg says, there's a name for all this, state capitalism.

I would say state capitalism is a model of capitalism where most of the means of production

remain in private hands and private

shareholders, but the state takes a very strong role in deciding what those private companies

can do. And that role goes beyond just, say, setting tax rates or even broad regulations,

but actually getting involved in the decisions by private companies about where to invest

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