Washington, D.C. – Yesterday, Congressman Jim Himes (CT-04), a senior member of the House Financial Services Committee, grilled Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on the Trump Administration’s repeated market interventions. Rep. Himes challenged him to explain how the President’s economic agenda – assuming government ownership stakes in 39 private companies, manipulating prices through unpredictable tariff regimes, and a failed intervention in the bond market – differs from the core tenets of communism.
An excerpt of Rep. Himes’ line of questioning of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent during a House Financial Services Committee Hearing held on September 15, 2026:
HIMES: The government now owns thirty-nine companies. The government has imposed tariffs. I don’t like tariffs. Whether you think they’re a good idea or bad idea, they are an intervention in the free market…
The President recently offered five thousand dollars for a vote. Now,to thosein the legal world, that would be called a bribe, but you could think of it as an intervention in political markets. And by the way, I have no doubt that if I walk down there right now and said, “I will pay you five thousand dollars if you focus your buying on the three-year treasury,” that conversation would end with me in handcuffs.
But the question I have for you, Mr. Secretary, relates to your intervention in the markets. And I’m not going to ask you to agree with me here, but I can think of no administration in the last 50 years that is quite as communist as the Trump administration. Constant interventions in the operations of the free market.
Rep. Himes’ full questioning of Secretary Bessent can be viewed here.