Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump form the unlikely alliances of billions in Chipmaker subsidies
US SEN. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) He has a long-time political enemy of President Donald Trump. In the political plot, however, Sanders, considered progressive, lined up his enemy to transform multi-local semiconductor subsidies into government stock betting in private companies.
Unlikely Duo-Samo-Popesy Democratic Socialist from Vermont and Populist Republican President-is agreement on one shift in American industrial policy: if the government is distributed by billions, taxpayers should own a piece.
“If Microchip receives profits from generous grants they receive from the federal government, taxpayers of America have the right to a reasonable return on this investment,” Sanders said Luck.
The subject of this unprecedented convergence is Intel, a fighting chipmaker that received $ 10.9 billion under the Chips and Science Act 2022. Injection was part of a wider $ 39 billion subsidy that was designed to attract semiconductor production outside Asia. Trump’s administration is now trying to exchange some of these grants for government ownership shares that culminated in the markets and shares of Sennt Intel by 6% of the sale of notifications.
Intel refused to comment.
Strange Bedfellows
This idea came first Sanders, he said.
Sanders has long criticized chips as a corporate well -being for some of the most profitable technology companies in the world. In 2022, he and the USA Dream. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) Proposes a change that requires the Department of the Ministry of Finance to accept orders, own shares or senior debts whenever federal money went to private chips. However, this amendment has failed.
Now, three years later, Trump is reviving this idea and applauding Sanders.
“I am glad that Trump’s administration is in agent with the change I offered three years ago,” Sanders said. “Taxpayers should not provide billions of dollars in the social care of a big, profitable corporations like Intel without getting anything in return.”
For Trump, this step represents a dramatic embrace of state intervention in the private sector, a tactic that has become more and more based on the second term. This month Trump called for re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-over-over-over links to Chinese companies. At the beginning of this year, the Administration concluded an agreement that allowed NVIDIA and AMD to sell AI chips to China in exchange for Washington, which pocket 15% of income.
It is an economic strategy that less as Reaganism and more Mashup between populism and state capitalism. In this case, Trump and Sanders are two representatives of APT for merging camps.
White House did not answer Fortune’s Request for comment at the time of the press.
Backward shock
Investors are not layered strategies and punish Intel shares due to the uncertainty of what government ownership. This month, Intel has been looking for private capital infusions – including an injection of $ 2 billion from Japanese SoftBank – to support its balance sheet.
According to Reuters, the Ministry of Commerce led by Minister Howard Lunick still reviews how to implement. However, the optics is clear: the United States seems to not subsidize the production of semiconductors without connected chains.
This is a verification for Sanders; And for Trump it is a newly discovered strategy. But for Intel, who was once an indisputable king of us, it is another twist in the turbulent year.
(Tagstotranslate) Bernie Sanders