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Throughout the day, Trump stated that the U.S. shares would be valued at $10 billion and $11 billion without providing details. He wrote in another Truth Social post, “The United States paid nothing for these Shares, and the Shares are now valued at approximately $11 Billion Dollars.” Intel is expected to receive about $10 billion in CHIPS Act grants from the government to build chip plants in the U.S., making it roughly equivalent to the value of the U.S. shares.
Just two weeks earlier, Trump had called for Tan’s resignation due to alleged connections with China and described him as “highly CONFLICTED.” But after meeting with Tan on August 11, Trump said he liked him a lot. The Pentagon is also set to become the largest shareholder in a small mining company to boost rare earth magnet output, and the U.S. government negotiated a “golden share” with certain veto rights as part of a deal allowing Nippon Steel to buy U.S. Steel.
The U.S. government’s broad intervention in corporate matters has worried critics who say Trump’s actions create new categories of corporate risk. Democratic Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, a co-author of the CHIPS and Science Act, said Congress “must apply thorough scrutiny for potential conflicts of interest or undue interference in private-sector decisions unrelated to national security.”