President Donald Trump wanted the CEO of a major corporation removed, and then the federal government bought a significant chunk of that same company, Intel. There's work to bend the Federal Reserve to the administration's will. There's selective tariff policy, and the president telling Walmart not to raise prices despite tariffs. Maybe less seriously, there’s also President Trump telling Coca-Cola to use cane sugar.

Is there a word for all of this economic intervention? “Marketplace Morning Report” host David Brancaccio put that question to Justin Wolfers, an economist at the University of Michigan. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.

Justin Wolfers: You also forgot a few others. He's been redesigning the Cracker Barrel logo in his spare time, calling Harvard and telling it who to hire and fire and what to put on its curriculum. He's been talking to Nvidia and AMD about under what conditions he'll let them sell their goods in China. He has a golden share in U.S. Steel. And not too long ago, he called Goldman Sachs and told them to fire their chief economist. It's a long list.

David Brancaccio: It's a long list. And I guess, you know, as we search for what to describe this as, I know what to not describe it as: It doesn't sound like an orthodox free market approach to the private sector.

Wolfers: Absolutely. So, right, what words can we give it? So one would be “state capitalism.” Capitalism is, obviously, we still have free markets in most things, but there's a lot of direction from the state, as per China. Another would be “intervention.” I like this term “intervention” because it describes what they're doing. They're intervening in the economy, intervening often where it's to please the president's whims rather than there being a deep economic reason. I’ve had a number of journalists from more populist outfits who'd say, “Well, this is socialism.” It's not. “This is communism.” It's not. It's government intervention. It's the heavy hand. Sometimes it's the greedy hand as well, because some of these moves, particularly when it comes to crypto and the like, are actually very closely related to the president's personal interests. This might be the most important: crony capitalism. So it's not just that the government's intervening. This is where policy helps the president's cronies. And so if you want something good, if you want regulatory relief, you have to turn up to the White House and you have to praise the president.

Brancaccio: I mean, a lot of this adds up to a lot of friction for markets in different ways. It sounds like the opposite of efficiency in some ways.

Wolfers: Yes. One way of telling the story is the story of Apple. Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, brilliant visionary, relentlessly focused on creating a better product, and he succeeded. Apple products are brilliant and beautiful, and that was his job. And, you know, he was so relentless that some people found him hard to deal with, but he was focused on better products.

Tim Cook doesn't get to spend that much time looking at shiny new products. He's flying off to Mar-a-Lago. He's flying to Washington. He's having meetings about where the factory should or shouldn't be and what will or won't upset the White House. And so what this does — I tell the story there of Apple, not because I care about Apple, but because this is a metaphor for what's happening inside every company — is it moves you away from competing in the marketplace — who's producing a better mousetrap, a shinier mousetrap — to competing in the political marketplace. And that's part of Tim Cook's job now — an important part, because if he didn't do well at that, Apple would fail. But that's all time that the company is focused on the White House rather than its customers, and that's going to lead to worse outcomes.