The Trump administration might not stop at Intel when it comes to acquiring stakes in US companies.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said on CNBC that the Pentagon is eyeing similar arrangements with defense contractors, saying that Lockheed Martin is “basically an arm of the US government.”
A day earlier, President Donald Trump said he would make similar deals “all day long.”
The government’s 10% stake in Intel has attracted scrutiny from some Republicans. “There are clear concerns about precedent here,” Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., told reporters Tuesday, adding that this wasn’t the intended purpose of the semiconductor legislation the company wanted federal funding from.
And these kinds of deals could be bad for shareholders, Semafor’s Rohan Goswami writes: “A board might suddenly find itself emboldened to make decisions that shareholders disagree with thanks to the protective halo of a government stake.”