Investors momentarily lost their minds on Aug. 22 when President Trump confirmed that the US government was planning to take a 10% stake in chip giant Intel (INTC), and the stock price surged. That’s crazy, because nothing could be worse for a company than the government — any government — getting involved and telling the CEO what to do.
Trump’s deal would give the US government a 10% stake in Intel in exchange for federal subsidies included in the 2022 CHIPS Act, which President Biden signed into law. Trump called the arrangement a “great deal.” Free marketeers howled. “A terrible decision, bad for almost everyone,” Scott Lincicome of the libertarian Cato Institute said on social media. “Bad for Intel’s long-term viability, as politics, not commercial considerations, increasingly drive its decisions.”
Trump is on an investment spree comparable to…
