US President Donald Trump said he wants to make more investments in healthy US companies on Monday. Whether Corporate America is on board is another story.
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The White House announced a near-10 per cent stake in chipmaker Intel on Friday that converts government grants into an equity share.
Trump doubled down on the idea of similar deals in other sectors on Monday, telling reporters at the White House: “I hope I’m going to have many more cases like it.”
The administration’s approach upends a decades-old view of the US economy, in which the government only took corporate stakes in rare emergencies such as the 2008 global financial crisis and the subsequent bailout of US car companies.
Intel is struggling but still has a cash cushion of US$9 billion and a market value of US$105 billion.
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To critics, the Intel move – along with the White House’s pressure on the US Federal Reserve to lower interest rates, its use of emergency powers to slap tariffs on imported goods and involvement in various mergers – threatens the US business world’s nimbleness.