If the government subsidizes businesses, profits will increase. High profits will encourage more people to start new businesses, which will increase competition. Increased competition will force businesses to reduce prices, which will reduce profits.
So there is a TEMPORARY increase in profits whenever the government starts or increases subsidies to businesses. There is also a TEMPORARY decrease in profits whenever the government decreases or stops subsidies to businesses. Government subsidies to businesses do not cause any change in total profits.
Anything which helps businesses encourages more people to start businesses, increases competition, reduces consumer prices, and reduces profits. Anything which hurts businesses discourages people from starting businesses, reduces competition, increases prices, and increases profits. Most goverment regulations on business discourage people from starting businesses, which reduces competition, which increases prices and profits.
So when the socialists attack businesses for excessive profits, the socialists are actually causing profits to increase. In a free market, profits are limited by competition. Excessive profits are caused by insufficient competition. But the socialists think the solution to insufficient competition is to increase regulation, which reduces competition. This is as logical as trying to solve the problem of insufficient food by reducing the amount of food. Perhaps that explains why there is so much starvation in socialist nations. The correct government response to excessive profits is for the government to eliminate restrictions on competition.
Government subsidies to businesses do cause lower consumer prices. This would be good for consumers, except that subsidies must be paid for through taxes. The good and bad effects of government subsidies to businesses mostly cancel each other, so the combined effect is small. The cost of the taxes is likely to exceed the benefits of the lower prices. A ten percent sales tax, with the proceeds used to subsidize businesses, might result in a nine percent reduction in prices, which would make consumers 1 percent poorer overall. Government subsidies to businesses is a bad policy, but not a very bad policy.
However, this assumes that the subsidies are distributed to all businesses equally. If the subsidies were given only to the government's favorite businesses, whose leaders were close friends and campaign contributors to the government leaders; then there would be misallocation of resources. Government favoritism is a worse policy than government subsidies to businesses
Also, this assumes that there is a true free market. If the market is not completely free, if there are any government regulations or other restrictions on competition, then increased profits will not result in increased competition, and increased competition will not cause profits to decrease. In an unfree market, government subsidies to businesses do cause total profits to increase.
In a free market, consumers benefit from government subsidies to businesses. In an unfree market, businesses benefit from government subsidies to businesses.
In the real world, if a business is able to convince the government to provide subsidies, then the business is probably also able to convince the government to restrict competition. So government subsidies to businesses always occur in an unfree market; and businesses, not consumers, benefit from the subsidies.
In the real world, government subsidies to businesses and restrictions on competition usually occur simultaneously. Both reduce the total wealth of society. But restrictions on competition are worse than subsidies to businesses.
When faced with the two problems of government subsidies to businesses and restrictions on competition, socialists attack the little problem of government subsidies to businesses and ignore the big problem of restrictions on competition. This is yet another example of the stupidity of socialists.