- calendar_today August 23, 2025
.
The U.S. federal government now owns the largest share of Intel following an order from President Donald Trump to make the ailing U.S. chipmaker a 10% stakeholder in the company. The decision is a break with Republican economic orthodoxy and has set off alarms among conservatives who usually support the former president.
Trump has been promoting the transaction as a shrewd investment and good deal for American taxpayers, telling his interviewer, “We’re going to get richer and richer with this thing.” The former president has also hinted that the Intel deal is just the first of many. “I hope I’m going to have many more cases like it,” Trump said, foreshadowing what once would have been known as industrial policy: the deliberate and explicit participation of government in the development and stewardship of major industries.
At issue, for many, is whether or not Trump crossed the line into socialism. For generations, socialism has been at least partly defined as the government control of the means of production for the benefit of society. If that is the definition, critics of Trump are saying, then this is nothing new. Nothing that the federal government does with Intel is different from what the Chinese or Russians do with their own corporations.
The political hypocrisy is delicious. When former President Barack Obama sought to take over Chrysler and General Motors during the 2008–9 financial crisis, the move was considered by conservatives to be an emergency rescue of two iconic American companies that were on the brink of collapse. But had Obama ordered a 10% stake in Intel, Trump’s allies say, Fox News and conservative talk radio would have railed against communism.
Trump argues that it is different this time, and the move to stake the government in Intel is not a bailout but an investment. “We took a grant that was going to go to Intel — $8.7 billion, or $8 billion, whatever it is … and we changed it into equity,” Trump said, referring to the grant funds that the Biden administration has already committed to the company under the bipartisan Chips Act. Trump’s terms for the deal, he said, created between $10 billion and $11 billion in value for taxpayers on day one. “Why are ‘stupid’ people unhappy with that?” he asked.
The response from conservatives has been mostly angry. Larry Kudlow, Trump’s former top economic adviser, said on Fox Business: “I was very, very uncomfortable with that idea.” Steve Moore, another Trump informal adviser, was blunter: “I hate corporate welfare. That’s privatization in reverse. We want the government to divest of assets, not buy assets. So terrible, one of the bad ideas that’s come out of this White House.”
An editorial in the National Review warned that “government shouldn’t get into the chip business.” Senator Thom Tillis said that the deal “starts to make us a semi-state-owned enterprise a la CCCP.” Senator Rand Paul used the same analogy on social media: “Wouldn’t the government owning part of Intel be a step toward socialism? Terrible idea.”
The transaction has its fans, too, including progressive Senator Bernie Sanders. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, an early Trump adviser, rushed to Trump’s defense during an interview with Laura Ingraham: “That is not socialism. That’s the best businessman in the United States of America in the Oval Office doing fair things for us.”
Intel itself raised some alarms in a mandatory SEC filing on the deal. The company warned that the relationship could make it harder to get future government grants, hurt foreign sales, and subject the company to heavier government regulation. Intel is not exactly in a strong position, having announced earlier this year that it was laying off 15% of its workforce. Shares of Intel were trading at about $110 billion, down 50% for the year to date, before Trump’s announcement. The stock did move up by 4% right after Trump’s comments.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump at one point ordered Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan to resign over previous Chinese connections before having a change of heart after a personal meeting at the White House. “I liked him a lot, I thought he was very good,” Trump said afterward.
The promise from the Biden administration that the U.S. government will remain a non-voting shareholder and make no efforts to influence Intel’s business decisions is not enough for some skeptics, who note that when the president of the United States becomes a company’s largest shareholder, the interests of the two are unavoidably intertwined.
If Intel rights the ship and starts to do well, Trump will be able to take credit for protecting one of America’s most important technologies. If the company continues to struggle, the American people will be on the hook. Trump has not promised to stop with Intel, and has openly said he intends to do more like this in the future. So the question of whether this is socialism or capitalism or just Trumpism may not be settled.
But at the very least, Trump has created a new relationship between the federal government and the private sector that is likely to endure far beyond this transaction or his presidency.
