Chairman Trump: has the US turned its back on free-market capitalism?

Republicans once believed governments should get out of the way. Trump is making his influence felt in every corner of the American economy

When Ronald Reagan became the first US president to address China's Great Hall of the People in 1984, he did not waste an opportunity to school his audience on the benefits of the American way.

He boiled down his central economic ideology, and that of his Republican party - that governments should get out of the way, allow companies, industries and markets the space the thrive, without intervention - into a simple mantra: trust the people.