Trump knows his Freedom Fuel is kind of socialism, right? | Opinion

Sometimes President Donald Trump does something good.

On July 7, Trump's administration launched the Freedom Fuel Network – a collection of 25 gas stations across Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Fuel at any of these stations is $3.47 a gallon – 32 cents less than the national average that day.

"The administration is not involved in the company, nor has the administration given the company any funding. There is no other entity or person subsidizing the lower gasoline costs," a White House spokesman said. "This retailer is taking the lead, others should follow."

Surprising even myself, I don't hate this initiative. Perhaps that's because it doesn't look like the typical capitalist framework Republican legislation works within.

In fact, it might even be more akin to socialism. It sure sounds like it, considering that Freedom Fuel involves manipulating the market to make a product cheaper for consumers. It seems like the kind of thing New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani would support – not Trump.

Freedom Fuel is even bringing these gas stations to the largely blue areas surrounding Philadelphia, like Lansdowne, whose county went for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris in the 2024 election – meaning Trump is lauding a gas station network helping liberals far more than his base.

Yet perhaps the president is doing this because he will go to any length to retain a sliver of popularity with his voting base – even if it means thumbing his nose at the free market. After all, this initiative and others like it are popular with voters, even when socialism itself isn't.

How else is President Trump being a good socialist?

This isn't the first instance of socialism-lite in the Trump administration. Over the July 4 weekend, he rolled out Trump Accounts, where anyone can give money to a specific child that will be invested in an index fund and available once they turn 18. Each child born between 2025-28 will start out with $1,000 in seed money from the U.S. government. The catch – and the more capitalistic element of the accounts – is that they could be used to privatize Social Security in the long term.

There's also TrumpRx, introduced in February, that reportedly offers more than 600 generic versions of drugs at lower prices "encouraging (Americans) to compare against co-pays offered by their insurance company." The administration accomplished this by trying to make a deal with pharmaceutical companies on behalf of Americans – taking yet another page from the socialist agenda.

There's even the merger of Japan's Nippon Steel and U.S. Steel in 2025, where the government intervened in the agreement and gained the ability to make decisions in production, even allowing the United States to appoint somebody to the company's board of directors. This is a basic tenet of socialism – allowing the government to take ownership in private companies.

Everything Trump is doing sounds like it would fit into a Democratic Socialists of America pamphlet on how to make socialism work in the United States. He might even be better at doing democratic socialism than Mamdani – at least because he's doing it on a larger scale.

Trump is creating a blueprint for Democrats

Of course, Trump isn't a socialist. Like with anything he does, he only cares about how it will make him appear to his base.

And while 57% of Americans still have a negative view of socialism, according to recent Gallup polling, the two most popular figures on the left in the country – Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York – are democratic socialists. And it seems like people tend to like socialist ideas, especially when they're not labeled as such.

Trump is a populist. He is making decisions based on what the people want – and what the people want are lower gas prices, cheaper prescriptions and some semblance of financial security. After all, capitalism doesn't care about lowering prices, only about the bottom line. Republicans know this and don't care.

But Trump isn't doing any of this because he believes socialism is the future. He is only adopting policies that could be viewed as socialist because he can attach his name to them, allowing his followers to continue to treat him like a king instead of a president.

I don't think the Democratic Party should call out this hypocrisy. After all, these are elements of Trump's agenda that people like, and that ultimately benefit people. Instead, they should take note and find ways to incorporate similar policies in their own 2028 agenda, albeit without the Trump name attached to it.

Follow USA TODAY columnist Sara Pequeño on Bluesky: @sarapequeno.bsky.social

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump knows his Freedom Fuel is kind of socialism, right? | Opinion

Reporting by Sara Pequeño, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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This story was originally published July 12, 2026 at 1:01 AM.