Was it a typo or a Freudian slip? The Washington Post reports:



As president‐​elect, for instance, Trump took Boeing to task for cost overruns when he tweeted that the Air Force One program’s $4 billion expenditures were “out of control” and suggested the contract be canceled.…





Trump was more complementary on Feb. 17, when he made appearance at a Boeing factory in South Carolina and concluded his remarks by saying, “May God bless you, may God bless the United States of America, and may God bless Boeing.”

The reporters meant “complimentary.” But indeed the point of the article is just how “complementary” big government and its big contractors are. Headlined “Why America’s biggest government contractors balked at criticizing Trump,” the article explores how CEOs started jumping off President Trump’s advisory councils after his disappointing remarks about white supremacists marching in Charlottesville — but not “the four government contractors on the president’s advisory councils — Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Harris Corp. and United Technologies.” After all,



In many ways, contractors such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin are more dependent on government decision‐​making than other companies that took part in the councils.

Indeed, if a large part of your business comes from government contracts, you’d better be very careful about criticizing the president of the United States. Especially a president who has little sense of the proper limits of presidential authority:



Those negotiations [over a new fighter plane] were marked by unusually close interactions between Trump and the business executives involved. Bloomberg later reported that Trump allowed Boeing chief executive Dennis A. Muilenburg to listen in on a call with a key government manager for the F-35 program as Trump sought information on the two planes.

President Trump’s tweets, legal problems, chaotic White House management, and other high‐​profile troubles may have diverted attention from a problem that many of us pointed out before he was elected: his “economic nationalism” that seems to mean in practice protectionism, crony capitalism, and a promise that he’ll personally run the U.S. economy.





Government contractors understand this. Even before he was elected, Trump intervened to “persuade” Carrier to keep a plant open in Indiana. How? Was it the state tax credits? Or something less public? The CEO of Carrier’s parent company United Technologies, Greg Hayes — who was later on the president’s manufacturing council — acknowledged that the deal to keep the plant open probably wasn’t really economic. But:



I was born at night, but it wasn’t last night. I also know that about 10 percent of our revenue comes from the U.S. government.

When companies get in bed with government, that’s the bargain they make. And as we’ve just seen, that bargain not only leads to economic decisions that make us all poorer, it stifles the free speech of those dependent on government decisions. And that’s a problem when government is the biggest landlord, employer, arts patron, and purchaser of goods and services in society.