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By Tim Wu

Mr. Wu is a professor at Columbia and a contributing opinion writer. She served at the National Economic Council as Special Assistant to the President for Competition and Technology Policy from 2021 to 2023.

Until last week, the controversy over TikTok, the Chinese-owned video sharing app, concerned questions of national security and censorship. But on Jan. 20, when President Trump signed an executive order pausing enforcement of the federal ban of the app, the significance of the TikTok controversy changed. It is now also a story about how the Trump administration seems intent on managing the economy.

It seems that Trump will verify to negotiate an agreement with Tiktok to locate an American spouse to win part of the business. (The prohibition prohibits the distribution of the application in the United States as long as it remains controlled through a Chinese company). Mr. Trump said that, as he understands, the prohibition “gives the President the right to conclude an agreement” and that he wants “a war of auction. “

With respect to Tiktok, this means that the president will probably choose a new owner for the application of his circle of rich and acquaintances. (Last weekend reports recommend that it be for the Oracle software company, whose executive president is Larry Ellison and several other investors to assume global operations. And if the agreement complies with, the law remains open questions.

But more vital than the agreement itself is the approach. It alludes to a new era in the US economic policy. UU. Which focuses on a key leader (MR. Trump) that actively selects the winners and losers. Undoubtedly, the Federal Government, through Congress, has practiced in the past a commercial policy. But the centralization of politics in the president would be anything different: more as an command economy, which in the United States could be called command capitalism.

The fact that Mr. Trump likes to be in the rate and conclusive agreements by themselves is nothing new. Actually, he never sought paintings in government restrictions. But during his first term as president, his instincts were frustrated through a variety of factors, in specific members of the personnel not aligned in his new vision of the Republican Party, as well as the institutional resistance to the government.

But this time, things are different. During the 8 years that followed the last time Trump took office, a vast network of ideologically sympathizers and applicants for branch chief evolved around him, and he came in with more specific plans to triumph over institutional resistance. In this context, his control of Tiktok suggests that his technique of “picking winners” from the economy can move from the fringe to the center, which represents a primary break from Republican orthodoxy, indeed, from American capitalism in general.

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