The Intel deal is a mistake

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/08/22/intel-trump-deal-china-chips/

Congratulations, America: On Friday, President Donald Trump announced that you are about to own a 10 percent share of Intel. Sure, our former world-beating national champion is now an aging also-ran in critical markets. Sure, taxpayers will be disgorging almost $9 billion to seal the deal. But in exchange you’ll get … shares in a company that has spent recent years stumbling on execution and missing one strategic opportunity after another.

The Trump administration agreed to disburse more previously awarded Chips Act money to Intel, along with a $3.2 billion grant through the Secure Enclave program; in exchange, the administration demanded, and got, roughly 10 percent of Intel’s equity. That will undoubtedly make a fine press release for the administration.

But like the agreement to allow Nvidia and AMD to export certain chips to China in exchange for 15 percent of sales, this kind of presidential dealmaking is a bad precedent: We should do things because they’re good policy, not because the government gets a cut. This particular policy also risks distorting the free-market system that has delivered better results for America, and the world, than any state-managed competitor has ever achieved. And it is unlikely to fix the deep problems with Intel, which have been decades in the making.