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A year ago, Scott Bessent was trashing the type of federal interventions he is now charged with helping to carry out.

In a little-noticed speech at the conservative-leaning Manhattan Institute last year, Bessent lambasted the Biden administration’s policies as inefficient “central planning” that drove up prices throughout the economy. He swung at federal subsidies for electric vehicles and argued that they distorted markets.

Bessent labeled it as “Bidenismo,” a not-so-subtle comparison to the late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez’s socialist policies branded as Chavismo.

Today, Bessent is joining other Trump administration officials in saying that the U.S. government will now exercise more authority over the economy as President Donald Trump’s trade war against China re-enters a volatile phase. Beijing recently announced a rare-earth mineral export ban that’s more drastic than its initial version from the spring, with the latest restrictions affecting products containing even a trace amount of Chinese material. They’re supposed to take effect in December. Since China enjoys a virtual monopoly in the refining of rare earths, the U.S. can’t easily secure another foreign supplier.

In response, the Trump administration is planning more government stakes in strategic industries, stacked on top of existing equity shares it holds in four privately-held companies like U.S. chipmaker Intel and MP Materials , a rare-earth mining company. Price floors are also in play to ensure a predictable revenue flow for resources susceptible to global price swings.

Trump-world is borrowing a page from Beijing’s command-and-control economy, in which the state has a stronger hand with direct shares in firms and influence in their business decisions.

“It definitely mimics that in it's a much more interventionist approach than what we're used to here with more state ownership of enterprises, and setting price floors,” said Stan Veuger, a senior fellow at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute. “I find it difficult to imagine this would stop with a very narrow set of industries.”

Bessent has said Beijing will “neither command nor control” the U.S. That function will be left to others like him, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and of course, Trump.

The horizon for government intervention has kept expanding . Lutnick has suggested the Trump administration should take a 50% cut of the revenue generated by university patents. He was a chief architect of the deal in which the federal government took a 15% share in Intel, rendering it a “national champion” in the U.S. chip industry.

Yet more federal activity to spur more private-sector investment in rare earths may be needed to diminish China’s enormous sway in rare earth mining.

Rare earths form through volcanic activity or other natural processes in Earth’s crust. They’re often found in deposits mixed with other elements. So mining and refining them into separate elements that power everything from an iPhone to the cutting-edge F-35 fighter jet is time-consuming and expensive.

Kanika Singh, director of innovative finance at the Milken Institute, pointed to the 2010 Chinese rare earth embargo on Japan as a cautionary case study. The seven-week ban provoked panic in the Japanese industry, particularly for automakers who relied on Chinese materials to assemble their auto magnets. Once the ban was lifted, a major Tokyo-based firm struck a deal with an Australian mining company to loosen Beijing’s grip on the rare earth sector.

The Trump administration is looking to Australia as well. It announced a new pact with the Australian government on Monday to kickstart rare earth mining ventures between companies in both countries. It’s unclear how quickly the agreement will pave the way for the flow of rare earth minerals to the U.S.

In the U.S., a similar reckoning among policymakers and the private sector hasn’t happened, until now.

“The private sector has a very hard time financing innovations in the mining space because it takes a very long time to prove and secondly because of the commodity price volatility,” Singh told me. She added that the federal government can operate with a “longer-term horizon” for returns on its investment, giving it the ability to stomach price swings in a way a private investor might not.

For the time being, Beijing and Washington will point their economic cannons and threaten to fire. Each wants to remind the other of the damaging trade weapons at their disposal without provoking a more devastating trade war. For Trump, it’s tariffs. For Chinese President Xi Jinping, it’s a rare earth embargo.

“Each side sort of has an economic WMD,” said Tim Keeler, an former official at the Office of the Trade Representative who’s now a partner at the law firm Mayer Brown. “But each side’s tools are so powerful, it’s like mutually assured destruction.”