WASHINGTON — Top officials in President Donald Trump’s administration are signaling they may move to have the U.S. government take stakes in more companies, even as its decision to take one in chipmaker Intel is drawing criticism and warnings from some Republicans.
In an appearance on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Tuesday, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said there is currently a “monstrous discussion” about whether the U.S. should wade into the defense industry in particular. He noted that officials at the Pentagon were weighing equity stakes in defense companies that do business with the government, specifically mentioning aerospace and defense firm Lockheed Martin.
”Lockheed Martin makes 97 percent of their revenue from the U.S. government,” Lutnick said. “They are basically an arm of the U.S. government.”
In an interview with Fox News on Wednesday, meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent dismissed the idea that the government could seek equity in Nvidia – the company that will give the U.S. a cut of its chips sales to China per the terms of a deal the administration secured earlier this month. At the same time, he left open the possibility of such a move with firms in other industries that are currently “reshaping.” The Treasury chief mentioned shipbuilding in particular.
The comments from two of Trump’s top officials comes on the heels of the president’s announcement last week that the U.S. government was taking a 10% stake in embattled Silicon Valley-based chipmaker Intel by converting billions of dollars in funds that were already designated for the company through the bipartisan CHIPS and Science act, signed by former President Joe Biden.
It came just weeks after Trump called on Intel’s CEO to resign, calling him “CONFLICTED” in a post on Truth Social after Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., raised concerns about his potential ties to China.
Since striking the deal, Trump has defended the move and signaled himself that similar ones could be in the pipeline.
“I just made $10 billion, or $11 billion for the United States of America, and yeah, there will be other cases,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday after writing on Truth Social earlier in the day that he would make deals for the country like the Intel one “all day long.”
Several of the Trump administration’s interactions with the corporate world have raised some eyebrows, including the previously mentioned deal with Nvidia and AMD that will see them share 15% of their revenue from sales of certain chips used in artificial intelligence development to China with the U.S. government as well as an agreement secured to allow Japan-based Nippon Steel takeover U.S. Steel.
But the move to take an equity stake in a company in particular has riled a handful of Republicans, with two even invoking terms like “State-sponsored capitalism” and “socialism.”
”If socialism is government owning the means of production, wouldn’t the government owning part of Intel be a step toward socialism?” Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., wrote in a post on X. “Terrible idea.”
Paul’s fellow Kentucky Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie, who frequently finds himself in Trump’s crosshairs, similarly took to X to argue that the “government should not have ownership in private companies.”
Ohio Republican, Rep. Warren Davidson, meanwhile, reposted Lutnick’s announcement of the deal on X, writing “Big news ≠ Good news.”
”America will not outperform China by being more like China,” he added.
Administration officials have been rigorously defending the deal, with Bessent in his interview with Fox News on Wednesday, arguing that “President Trump is going to be the only president in modern times who creates assets for the American people rather than debt.”
“And, we looked, he saw that Intel had been given grants and wanted to know why the American taxpayer wouldn’t participate in the upside,” Bessent added.
The director of Trump’s National Economic Council, Kevin Hassett, told CNBC in an interview on Monday that the Intel deal could set the stage for a potential future sovereign wealth fund for the U.S. He added he was “sure” that there would be “more transactions” at some point.
