President Trump's grand economic vision relies on a simple tradeoff:

• Americans will accept short-term personal sacrifice — higher prices, fewer options, slimmer profits — to gain long-term national strength, Axios' Zachary Basu writes.

Why it matters: Trump is breaking sharply from free-market orthodoxy in his second term, blending bursts of anti-capitalism with a top-down, nationalist agenda for American dominance.

Critics on the left and right are labeling this "MAGA Maoism" — a movement that demands ideological purity, glorifies economic sacrifice, and embraces state power as a means to reshape society.

• Trump's strongman instincts, and his deep skepticism of cultural elites and bureaucrats, have only intensified comparisons to China's revolutionary leader.

🗯️ What they're saying: "MAGA Maoism is spreading through the populist right," former congressional speechwriter Rotimi Adeoye wrote for The Washington Post last month.

• James Surowiecki, the first journalist to deduce that the White House used trade deficits to calculate its reciprocal tariffs, argued Monday that Trumpism is "becoming perversely, farcically Maoist."
• Drew Pavlou, an Australian anti-communism activist, wrote on Substack that "the entire world is now held hostage to Trump and his primitive, strangely Maoist worldview."

🥊 Reality check: Trump's worldview is driven not by Marxist theory, but by a deeply held belief that America has been getting ripped off for decades.

• He's constrained by the rule of law, unlike China's totalitarian state — and there's no comparison to the mass death and violence committed by Mao Zedong's communist regime.

Plus, much of Trump's agenda remains pro-capitalist: He champions private industry, not state ownership. His appeals to sacrifice are rooted in geopolitical competition, not class struggle.

But listen to recent rhetoric from Trump, and it's clear why the analogy has gained traction.

• "We are a department store, and we set the price," Trump told TIME when asked about tariff rates. "I meet with the companies, and then I set a fair price ... and they can pay it, or they don't have to pay it."

🖼️ The big picture: Trump's embrace of centralized economic power is one piece of a governing style that borrows heavily from strongman traditions.

1. Ritualistic praise: Trump's televised Cabinet meetings always begin with his secretaries showering him in praise — casting the president as the only leader capable of restoring America's greatness.
2. Loyalty tests: Trump and his aides have carried out mass purges of career officials deemed insufficiently loyal, including at the Justice Department and Pentagon, and in the U.S. intelligence community.
3. Civil society: Trump has sought retribution against the media, law firms, nonprofits and political opponents. Some Chinese see echoes of the Cultural Revolution, when nearly all of society's institutions were destroyed.
4. War on academia: The Trump administration has cracked down on dozens of universities over alleged antisemitism and DEI programs, moving to weaken elite liberal institutions seen as hostile to MAGA.
5. Military spectacle: The Pentagon plans to host a massive military parade in D.C. on Trump's birthday in June, coinciding with the Army's 250th anniversary. AP says plans show the parade could include 6,600 soldiers, 150 vehicles and 50 helicopters, and could cost tens of millions of dollars.

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The latest plot twist in OpenAI's epic corporate drama leaves Sam Altman only partway toward his goal, announced last year, of separating the ChatGPT maker from the nonprofit that controls it, Axios' Ina Fried reports.

• Why it matters: At stake in this corporate-law conflict is control over what Silicon Valley sees as its next big platform — both who will reap the profits and who will shape AI socially and ethically.

Under the revamped plan announced yesterday, OpenAI's for-profit arm will, as long planned, shift from a "capped-profit" partnership to a public benefit corporation. PBCs are a relatively new structure that lets companies prioritize other goals besides profit.

• But they've already become a known quantity to investors — OpenAI rival Anthropic is also a PBC. Also, crucially, they don't put a limit on how much money an investor can make.

This plan would let OpenAI hang on to tens of billions of dollars in recent funding that were contingent on a restructuring — assuming OpenAI meets its upcoming deadlines for the changes.

• A recent investment round led by SoftBank requires the company to complete a restructuring by the end of the year.

Reality check: The other big part of Altman's original plan was to make this for-profit company independent of its current nonprofit board — the entity that fired him a year and a half ago (though its membership has since almost entirely changed). That's not happening now.

🔮 What's next: A lot of people still need to sign off on the new deal — most centrally, Microsoft. Microsoft is looking to preserve the value of its massive investments in OpenAI — at least $13 billion invested or committed to date.

• Bloomberg reports Microsoft and OpenAI are still negotiating.

The bottom line: "OpenAI is not a normal company and never will be," Altman wrote Monday in a letter to employees.

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President Trump's threat to impose tariffs on film imports to the U.S. could risk retaliatory actions in international markets, where American film studios make the bulk of their box office revenue, Axios Media Trends author Sara Fischer writes.

• Why it matters: Studios are already reeling from a weakened box office following the pandemic. Tariffs could send the industry into a tailspin.

🍿 How it works: The U.S. is the top exporter of films globally by far, with export value running at three times imports, according to the Motion Picture Association.

• U.S. movie studios typically drive the bulk of global box office sales. The majority of their revenue tends to come from distribution outside of the U.S., which is why any sort of retaliatory tariffs on U.S. film exports would be disastrous for Hollywood.

Case in point: The top-grossing movie globally last year, "Inside Out 2," was produced by U.S.-based entertainment giant Disney. But the bulk (61.6%) of its $1.7 billion in box office revenue was made abroad.

• Similarly, 56% of global ticket sales to Warner Bros. Pictures' "Barbie," the top-grossing film the year before, came from international distribution.

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Join Marc Caputo and me today for a members-only Axios AM Executive Briefing taking you inside the MAGA movement (Zoom @ 2 p.m. ET).

• We'll dive into brick-and-mortar MAGA — think tanks, super PACs, advocacy groups, fundraisers and advertisers powering Trumpism.

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Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent used a swing through the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills — with a pop-up reception, a main-stage speech, and a newsy CNBC hit — to reassure skeptical investing titans about President Trump's plans.

• Bessent told the elite annual gathering: "Tariffs are engineered to encourage companies like yours to invest directly in the United States. Hire your workers here. Build your factories here. Make your products here. You'll be glad you did."

⚡ "Milken Crowd Warms Up to Tariffs While Condemning All the Chaos," Bloomberg News reports, crediting Bessent with swaying "the largest gathering in months of Wall Street's champions of global trade."

• Financial leaders "lined up to say they can live with tariffs and a reworking of trade — just get it settled soon," Bloomberg added.

🔎 Behind the scenes: Richard Grenell — a Californian who's Trump's presidential envoy for special missions — hosted an invitation-only reception for Bessent on Sunday at The Peninsula Hotel that drew 150+ attendees, including Citi CEO Jane Fraser, Pershing Square founder and CEO Bill Ackman, Starwood Capital Group chair and CEO Barry Sternlicht, and Bank of New York Mellon CEO Robin Vince.

• Bessent spoke, and mingled for over an hour.

Caroline Wren — a longtime Trump fundraiser, and partner at Tactic Global, a new, Trump-allied D.C. consulting firm that staged the reception — told Axios that Bessent is "transcending politics" in "one of the most polarizing political climates in modern history, with "praise from Wall Street to Main Street, from Steve Bannon to Jamie Dimon, from Janet Yellen to Rand Paul."

• Charlie Gasparino, a Fox Business senior correspondent and New York Post columnist, credited Grenell with doing "something amazing": "He quickly and quietly assembled a MAGA outpost here in the middle of globalist heaven."

The Education Department barred Harvard from receiving new federal grant funding unless it meets a series of Trump administration demands, Axios' Sareen Habeshian writes.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a letter to Harvard president Alan Garber yesterday that the university "should no longer seek GRANTS from the federal government since none will be provided."

• "If Harvard prefers not to change, then Harvard should have no problem using its overflowing endowment to fund its bloated bureaucracy," she wrote.

Harvard is suing the Trump administration.

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Nearly half the country may need Real IDs to board domestic flights starting tomorrow, Axios' Alex Fitzpatrick writes.

• Why it matters: After years of delays, the Real ID deadline looks set to be finally, actually happening — and could cause chaos at airports despite tons of warnings from the government and airlines.

By the numbers: Nearly 47% of Americans lack a valid passport as of fiscal 2024, according to estimates from the Center for American Progress.

• That's a decent measure of potential demand for Real IDs. Alternatives include "enhanced" driver's licenses meant for international land or sea crossings.

🔬 Zoom in: West Virginia (79.3%), Mississippi (77.9%) and Alabama (72.3%) have the greatest shares of citizens lacking a passport.

• New Jersey (20.1%), California (28.2%) and Massachusetts (28.8%) have the smallest.

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For the third straight year, Utah was named the nation's No. 1 state, Axios Salt Lake City's Kim Bojórquez writes from a U.S. News & World Report ranking.

• Researchers used 71 metrics across eight categories (including education, economy and crime) to gauge how well states are performing for their citizens.

🐝 Utah ranked No. 1 in fiscal stability and third in both economy and infrastructure.

• New Hampshire, Idaho, Minnesota and Nebraska rounded out the top five.
• Louisiana, Alaska, Mississippi, New Mexico and West Virginia were the bottom five.

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