The history of American corporate nationalization (Tyler Cowen, August 24, 2025, Marginal Revolution)
You should note that although the United States has not so many state-owned enterprises, the American government still has ways of expressing its will on business, or as the case may be, favoring one set of businesses over another. In these latter cases it can be said that American business is expressing its will over government through forms of crony capitalism, a concept which is spreading in both America and China.
The United States has evolved a subtle brand of corporatism and industrial policy that is mostly decentralized and also – this is an important point — relatively stable across shifts of political power. America uses its large country privileges to maintain access to world markets and to protect the property rights of its investors, usually without much regard for whether they are Democrats or Republicans. For instance the State Department works hard to maintain open world markets for films and other cultural goods and services. Toward this end America has used trade negotiations, diplomatic leverage, foreign aid, and also explicit arm-twisting, based on its military commitments to protect allied nations in Western Europe and East Asia. America already had successful entertainment producers, it just wanted to make sure they could earn more money abroad, and that is why the American government usually insists on open access for audiovisual products when it negotiates free trade treaties. Yet in these deals there is not much if any explicit favoritism for one movie or television studio over another, or for one political alliance over another. Democrats are disproportionately overrepresented in Hollywood, but Republican administrations protect the interests of the American entertainment sector nonetheless. It’s about the money and the jobs, not about shifting political coalitions. You’ll note that the independence from particular political coalitions gives the American business environment a particular stability and predictability, to its advantage internationally and otherwise.