Who’s the worse President: Trump, or Biden?
22 September 2025, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)
I go with the economist Michael Hudson, that Trump is destroying the U.S. economy (and lots else), but here is Trump’s Secretary of Commerce — the man who had headed Trump’s selections of whom to hire to run each of the U.S. federal Departments, Trump’s Cabinet — talking with Axios’s Mike Allen, on September 16th, about Trump’s economic program:
The Axios Show, 16 September 2025
ALLEN: You took a stake in Intel.
2:05
You had the golden share,
2:06
arrangement with U.S. Steel.
2:08
You're taking a cut of Nvidia
2:10
chip sales to China.
2:12
Why are you
2:12
taking that approach?
2:14
LUTNICK: Well, let's do Intel for a minute.
2:17
So the Biden administration gave g-a-v-e
2:22
$11 billion to Intel, $110
2:25
billion company.
2:26
Why are we giving a company, giving them
2:29
$11 billion?
2:31
It's like Christmas every day.
2:34
So, what we said is stop, stop, stop.
2:38
You can have the money,
2:39
but America should have equity
2:41
in exchange for that.
2:42
Why are we giving corporate handouts?
2:45
It makes no sense.
2:46
So we basically turn that $11
2:48
billion gift
2:50
into an $11
2:51
billion acquisition of equity [ownership of 10% of the coompany].
2:53
ALLEN: So you're making the argument
2:55
for the hand of government.
2:56
People call it command capitalism.
2:58
Do you expect more deals like that?
3:00
LUTNICK: It’s not to command capitalism.
3:02
It's fair to America.
3:04
If you're giving away the money: Why?
3:07
If we never gave Intel any money?
3:10
I don't want a stake in Intel.
3:13
But if I'm going to give them
3:15
my predecessor
3:15
gave them signed contracts
3:17
to give them $11 billion.
3:19
My job is to make a better deal
3:21
for the American taxpayer.
3:22
So I think if we're going
3:23
to give people money, here's
3:25
my example.
3:26
If we're going to give scientists
3:29
NIH grants, give them money.
3:31
If I give them $50 million,
3:34
the US government
3:34
gives someone $50 million.
3:36
And let's say they invent the drug,
3:38
a patent, the drug,
3:39
and it's worth $50 million.
3:41
Just wait a second
3:42
and it's worth $50 million.
3:44
So it's a break even.
3:45
Why did they make the 50 and we lost 50?
3:48
We [the taxpayers] should get our money back
3:51
and participate. It's fair,
3:54
fair, fair fair.
3:55
And if you don't like the case,
3:57
then you're spending
3:58
$2 trillion deficit.
4:00
And President Trump's going to say
4:02
if we give away the money,
4:03
we're going to get something for
4:05
it. Fair
4:06
is who Donald Trump is.
4:08
ALLEN: If that's the model, who's next?
4:10
What other types of deals like this
4:11
can you see?
4:12
LUTNICK: I think universities
4:13
who are getting all this money,
4:15
the scientists get the patents,
4:17
the universities get the patents,
4:19
and the funder of $50 billion,
4:22
the U.S. government,
4:23
you know, we get zero.
4:25
It's time that we should.
4:26
Don't you think we should get,
4:28
if we in business.
4:30
If I gave them half the money,
4:32
if I gave them 100% of their money,
4:34
I would get half the profits
4:36
for the scientists.
4:37
So I think if we fund it
4:40
and they invent some patents,
4:42
the United States, American taxpayer,
4:44
should get half the benefit,
4:45
half the benefit.
4:47
And then what'll happen is our Social
4:48
Security system will be paid for
4:50
and we won't be a broke country
4:52
running $2 trillion deficits
4:54
because we're the richest country
4:55
in the world. We’re just dopey.
4:56
Do you realize we give away
4:58
between 2
4:59
and $300 billion a year in grants.
5:02
ALLEN: Now, the IP in
5:03
these universities
5:04
is incredibly valuable.
5:05
How quickly do you see
5:06
implementing that?
5:08
The US getting half the benefit,
5:11
every university
5:12
across the country,
5:13
or this is deal by deal?
5:15
LUTNICK: If we give them money,
5:18
the value
5:19
that they create with that money.
5:20
So there should be a blanket formula
5:23
or a blanket formula?
5:24
LUTNICK: It makes sense. It's fair
5:26
if we're paying for the research,
5:28
if we're paying for the lab,
5:30
if it's our money,
5:31
the American taxpayers’ money,
5:33
the American taxpayer
5:34
should be a partner
5:35
in the upside, we're happy
5:37
the scientist makes money.
5:38
We're happy
5:38
the university makes money.
5:40
But why isn't the American
5:41
taxpayer at the table?
5:44
Why is he? Why is the American taxpayer
5:45
just the foolish payer?
5:47
While these scientists make money,
5:49
the universities
5:50
make money and America gets a big fat
5:53
goose egg.
5:54
It just feels wrong.
5:56
And after I've just said it,
5:58
I think everyone who's watching
5:59
this is gonna think,
6:01
well, that's wrong.
6:01
America should participate.
6:03
How do we not get our money back?
6:05
That's insane.
——
Here’s what the Biden Administration’s deal was:
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https://www.barrons.com/articles/intel-intc-chips-act-stock-price-buybacks-c7ecfd37
Barrons, 26 November 2024
The government has finalized its grant to Intel.
On Tuesday, the Biden administration announced the Commerce Department has awarded $7.865 billion to the company via direct funding from the Chips and Science Act.
“These facilities are going to fundamentally change chip manufacturing and the strength of the chips industry in the U.S.,” Gina Raimondo, Secretary of Commerce, said on a call with reporters. “It’s a huge step forward in strengthening the U.S. semiconductor supply chain.”
Along with the funding, Intel agreed not to conduct stock buybacks for five years, with some undisclosed exceptions. The company had already paused its buybacks in recent years.
Congress passed the Chips Act in 2022, setting aside tens of billions to boost U.S. chip manufacturing. In March, the Biden Administration announced the Commerce Department had proposed up to $8.5 billion in direct funding to Intel. The agreement was nonbinding and subject to due diligence and milestones.
According to a senior administration official, the reason Intel didn’t receive the full $8.5 billion was due to a subsequent $3 billion “Secure Enclave” contract given to Intel to make chips for the U.S. military.
The official said the government takes a “portfolio level” approach to funding, and Intel received the largest aggregate award of nearly $11 billion. The person said the lower award had nothing to do with Intel’s recent financial troubles.
The official also said Intel wouldn’t be taking federal loans that were offered.
…
——
In my 7 August 2025 “How Americans Can Replace Our Existing Dictatorship, by a Democracy”, I documented, from polling, that Trump’e policy-priorities are almost exactly the public’s policy-priorities turned upside-down (in other words, the exact opposite); and, so, to say that Biden was even worse in some respects, isn’t at all to deny that Americans are given to vote for only nominees of two Parties both of which serve the the megadonors, the billionaires, and not the public. To be given a choice between arsenic and cyanide isn’t to be offered a gift (like the Establishment claims), but a death, but this is the way that electoral Party ‘democracies’ actually are, and people increasingly notice it the more desperate that things become, as they now are.
The CIA-edited and written Wikipedia (which blacklists (blocks from linking to) sites that aren’t CIA-approved) says that the great independent war-reporter Eva Bartlett is a ‘propagandist’ instead of what she actually is, because that’s what happens to someone from the U.S. empire who documents the facts that she reports, instead of (like that Wikipedia article does) merely flings around emotionally charged labels, as the CIA-approved propaganda-sites do in their ‘reporting’ (propaganda). Allowing only CIA-approved sites to be used for ‘documentation’ is to prohibit any truths that the Government wants the public to think to be lies. It’s reality turned upside-down.
Anyway, on 19 June 2025, UKColumn posted an interview of Bartlett in which she described how and why she moved away from and out of the U.S. empire, the more that she travelled to and experienced the realities in the countries that the U.S. empire calls its ‘adversaries’ — and worse. She also describes real differences between the predominant culture inside the U.S. empire, in which supremacist (anti-equalitarian) ideology is widespread, versus outside it, where supremacism is uncommon. My “How Americans Can Replace Our Existing Dictatorship, by a Democracy” seems likelier to be tried in The East (such as in Asia) than in The West (such as in NATO countries).
For example, as regards the present article, “Who’s the worse President: Trump, or Biden?,” both are clearly supremacist. Democrats cover-over their supremacism by equalitarian labels, but both Parties are clearlly supremacists.
—————
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.
A more fundamental question is this: what happens when the American people find out that the US Military routinely carries out the very same types of atrocities and outrages that Americans are used to associating with such official enemies, as say, the Communists or the Nazis or both? Would Americans become less patriotic? Would Americans finally become disillusioned with war? I wonder!
"Who’s the worse President: Trump, or Biden?"
On significant issues, there is no difference.