American oligarchy? Consider Trump’s inner circle.

Ever since Donald Trump’s reelection, a word typically used to describe the economy of Russia is being applied to the United States: oligarchy.

Yes, our capitalist system has been minting billionaires for decades, and they’ve long used campaign donations to cozy up to politicians. But with Trump retaking office, some worry the quid pro quo may rise to a whole other level, with an overt concentration of power in the hands of the few and well-connected, and a White House willing, even eager, to do business with them.

Consider that 44 percent of all the money raised to support Trump’s reelection came from just 10 mega donors, according to an analysis by OpenSecrets, which tracks the influence of money in politics. They’ll want something in return.

Indeed, even before the president-elect is sworn in, his ultra-rich donors are already calling the shots.

None more so than Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, who is emerging as a one-man shadow government, participating in a phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, interviewing potential Cabinet members at Mar-a-Lago, and co-leading a new “Department of Government Efficiency’’ that Trump says will streamline federal bureaucracy.

How’d Musk get that sort of access? By pouring $118.6 million into a pro-Trump superPAC, according to OpenSecrets, and turning X, formerly Twitter, into a megaphone for right-leaning content.

Then there are the cochairs of Trump’s transition team: Howard Lutnick and Linda McMahon. A far cry from the list of Republican elected officials who led his transition eight years ago, Lutnick is the CEO of financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald, while McMahon made a fortune cofounding World Wrestling Entertainment with husband Vincent.

Lutnick reportedly raised millions of dollars for Trump’s campaign, while the McMahons personally gave more than $20 million. And on Tuesday, Trump said he’d nominate Lutnick to be Commerce secretary, a role that would help set trade and tariff policies, while McMahon, who led the Small Business Administration for two years in Trump’s first term, was nominated for secretary of Education.

Of course, rich donors have long sought a return on their election investments, through tax cuts benefiting corporations and the wealthy and the occasional cushy ambassadorship. What’s different with a second Trump administration is the constellation of people it’s likely to attract who are eager to profit directly from being in its orbit, and how openly transactional both they and the incoming White House are. Typically, these sort of conversations happen behind closed doors. But not these days.

“The line between private wealth and public policy is going to get erased,’’ observed Daniel Drezner, professor of international politics at The Fletcher School at Tufts University. “There will be a lot more corruption.’’

Now, comparing billionaires who support Trump to Russian oligarchs is an imperfect analogy because oligarchs typically made their money seizing control of state-owned assets following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and many benefit more directly from state intervention in the economy than has been typical in the United States. American billionaires tend to be self-made, but if they want to preserve their wealth or get richer they’ll likely need the help of government.

Musk, for instance, has various business ventures that could benefit from the largesse of a Trump administration. His rocket company SpaceX and satellite subsidiary Starlink are already deeply intertwined with the federal government having held at least $15 billion in contracts across multiple agencies over the past decade, according to a New York Times analysis. Musk might also want to shield his electric-vehicle company Tesla from an anticipated rollback of climate initiatives that could hurt EV sales.

Then there’s Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and the owner of The Washington Post. Two weeks before the election, the Post abruptly decided not to endorse a candidate for president, a move widely viewed as a way for Bezos to protect his business empire, which includes rocket company Blue Origin that last year won a $3.4 billion contract with NASA to send astronauts to the moon.

But it is the cryptocurrency industry that might stand to gain the most from Trump and the Republicans who will now control the White House and Congress. Cryptocurrency companies and executives have poured more than $200 million into the Fairshake super PAC to elect pro-crypto candidates and defeat skeptics who’d more tightly regulate the fast growing industry.

The sector’s largesse makes them by far the dominant corporate political spender in 2024, representing almost half of all the corporate money sloshing around this election cycle, according to consumer advocacy group Public Citizen.

Leading the pack are two crypto companies — Coinbase and Ripple — that each gave about $45 million, according to OpenSecrets. The crypto industry wants more sympathetic enforcement and friendly regulations, and now appears poised to get it. Trump, who once described Bitcoin as a “scam,’’ over the summer vowed, if reelected, to make the United States “the crypto capital of the planet and Bitcoin superpower of the planet.’’

“It’s unprecedented, and I don’t use that word lightly,’’ said Rick Claypool, a research director at Public Citizen, who predicted other industries will follow suit if the strategy is successful. “Once it has been done, it can be easier for others to come in and do it again.’’

Chrissy Lynch, president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, whose union unanimously endorsed Kamala Harris, is also worried about a new strain of power that will keep the working class fighting for scraps.

“Billionaires already know how to game the system, and now they have the keys to the most powerful government and economy in the world,’’ Lynch wrote in an email. “Government is supposed to be a check to unlimited corporate power, not an arm of it.’’

One reassuring note: In a democracy, the system has a way of correcting itself. If Trump strays too far from his pocketbook pledges to cut the cost of housing and eggs, history suggests a reckoning will soon follow, says Robert Reich, labor secretary under President Bill Clinton and now a professor of public policy at University of California-Berkeley.

“When there are no checks and balances, there will be ­excess … they will go too far,’’ said Reich, whose 2020 book, “The System: Who Rigged It, How to Fix it’’ warned about the growing political power of the super wealthy at the expense of everyone else’s. “The biggest ­political divide in America today is not between Republicans and ­Democrats,’’ he wrote. “It’s between democracy and oligarchy.’’

Reich believes the country is in midst of a second Gilded Age, a period of great wealth disparities. He reminds me that the last Gilded Age ended in the early 1900s, felled by a progressive era fueled by the rise of organized labor and investigative journalists known as muckrakers.

“In the short term, this is terrible for the middle class and the working class, but if it produces what I expect it will produce, a great backlash — against the overreaching of this oligarchy, then America, ironically, may end up in a better place.’’

That might take a while, but offers hope that the American oligarchy’s days are numbered.

Shirley Leung is a Business columnist and host of the Globe Opinion podcast “Say More with Shirley Leung.’’ Find the podcast on Apple, Spotify, and globe.com/saymore. Follow her on Threads @shirley02186

She can be reached at shirley.leung@globe.com.