doi: 10.18178/joebm.2026.14.4.957
Crony Capitalism or National Interest? Investigating the Political Economy of the Trump 2025 Tariff Regime
Chi Sheh
- Department of Business, University of the West, Rosemead, USA
- Manuscript received June 20, 2026
- accepted July 29, 2026
- published October 27, 2026
Abstract
This paper examines whether the Trump administration’s 2025 tariff regime reflects crony capitalism—preferential policy allocation to politically connected firms—or legitimate economic and national security objectives. Drawing on Stigler’s regulatory capture theory, Grossman and Helpman’s “protection for sale” framework, and Tullock’s rent-seeking analysis, we find that exempted industries exhibit significantly higher lobbying expenditures than tariffed sectors and that the procedural architecture is structurally less transparent than its 2018–2020 predecessor. We characterize the 2025 regime as a hybrid system combining national interest rhetoric with institutional features that facilitate political favoritism. Implications for trade policy design and executive authority constraints are discussed.
Keywords
- crony capitalism
- discretionary trade policy
- executive authority
- political economy
- regulatory capture
- rent-seeking
- tariff exemptions
How to Cite
Chi Sheh, "Crony Capitalism or National Interest? Investigating the Political Economy of the Trump 2025 Tariff Regime," Journal of Economics, Business and Management, vol. 14, no. 4, pp. 279-283, 2026. https://doi.org/10.18178/joebm.2026.14.4.957
Copyright & License
Copyright © 2026 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).