Bessent defends stake in Intel: Chips ‘strategic necessity’
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent defended the U.S. taking a 10 percent stake in Intel amid concerns about government interference in the free market.
“Chips are a strategic necessity for us,” Bessent told Maria Bartiromo on Wednesday during an appearance on Fox Business’s “Mornings with Maria.”
“One of the things we learned during COVID was that the United States has [five to seven] strategic vulnerabilities in critical industries, and President Trump has set about de-risking that,” he continued.
Bessent noted there’s “substantial upside for the American taxpayer” as President Trump seeks to minimize the strategic vulnerabilities.
“President Trump is going to be the only president in modern times who creates assets for the American people rather than debt,” Bessent said, noting Trump “saw that Intel had been given grants and wanted to know why the American taxpayer wouldn’t participate in the upside.”
“So there’s $11 billion of immediate value,” Bessent continued. “And I think there’s a very good chance here that it could be much more.”
Trump announced Friday that Intel agreed to give the federal government a 10 percent stake in the struggling company in exchange for money previously allocated under the Biden-era CHIPS and Science Act.
Trump on Monday suggested more deals could be forthcoming.
“Yeah, there will be other cases, or if I have that opportunity again, I would do that. Then you do have stupid people say, ‘Oh that’s a shame,’” Trump said. “It’s not a shame. It’s called business.”
Trump announced the Intel deal after he reached a separate deal earlier this month with two other U.S.-based chipmakers, Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices, that will see them pay the U.S. government 15 percent of their revenue from AI chip sales to China.
Bessent, in the Wednesday interview, all but ruled out the prospect of the U.S. acquiring a stake in Nvidia, saying, “I don’t think Nvidia needs financial support so that seems not on the table right now.”
But he left the door open to the U.S. taking stake in other industries.
“Could there be other industries where we’re reshaping, something like shipbuilding?” Bessent asked. “Sure, there could be things like that. And these are critical industries that … we have to be self-sufficient in the United States.”