This is the Cato Daily podcast for Tuesday, March 4th, 2025.

I'm Caleb Brown. Corporate welfare has been with us a long time, but it's never been a bigger problem than today.

Cato's Chris Edwards identifies $181 billion in federal spending that comes in the form of direct aid to businesses.

His new paper on the subject is out today.

Chris, corporate welfare has a pretty long history, and it goes back to the founding of the

Republic.

Corporate welfare business subsidies have been handed out by the federal government all the way back.

You're right to the beginning of the republic. I mean, Alexander Hamilton, our first Treasury

Secretary famously published a report arguing that we ought to have, you know, all kinds of subsidies

for American manufacturing as well as import protections. And luckily,

that didn't go through Congress, but Congress did start subsidizing fur trading very early on in

the Republic, and then the 19th century subsidies for railroads and canals and all kinds of other

business activities.

And so what are the big ticket categories of corporate subsidies today?

Well, today I've completed a new Cater report where I go through the federal budget and I

tally up the total amount of corporate welfare or business subsidies.

I calculate the federal government hands out $181 billion a year in business subsidies.

This is everything from agriculture, you know, big corporate farm subsidies, energy subsidies,

broadband subsidies, aviation subsidies, and on and on and on.

Manufacturing subsidies, automobile subsidies. The federal government is starting to manipulate and

control dozens and dozens of different American industries. This is central planning. It is really bad, and we need to stop it.

In the waning days of the Biden administration, we had a number of pieces of legislation, most

...