Trump Regrets Holding Less Intel Stock, Says He Should Have Grabbed TSMC Business Early

According to Dongcha Beating's monitoring, U.S. President Trump expressed regret during an interview with Fortune magazine, stating that he wished he had acquired a larger stake when the U.S. government previously invested in Intel. In August of last year, the Trump administration announced the conversion of around $8.9 billion in subsidies from the "Chip Act" into equity (purchasing around 433 million shares at $20.47 per share), acquiring a 9.9% stake in Intel. Just 8 months later, the value of this holding had surged to over $50 billion, with an unrealized gain of over $41 billion.

Behind this windfall is the result of the U.S. government actively driving performance. The Wall Street Journal revealed that Apple has reached a preliminary agreement with Intel for the latter to manufacture chips on its behalf, breaking Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.'s long-standing monopoly. As a significant shareholder in Intel, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has met with Tim Cook multiple times over the past year, vigorously persuading Apple to divert orders to Intel. With the serious capacity constraints caused by the soaring demand for AI chips from giants like Nvidia squeezing TSMC, the chip-shortage-plagued Apple ultimately acquiesced.

In addition to Apple, Intel CEO Chen Liwu has garnered support from three major players since taking office a year ago: Nvidia invested $5 billion last September to have Intel manufacture data center CPUs on its behalf, and Musk announced last month a joint venture with Intel in Texas. To accommodate these large orders, Intel has heavily invested in its most advanced 14A process and, at the risk of legal action, poached TSMC executive Wei-Jen Lo to oversee manufacturing. Buoyed by this series of positive developments, Intel's stock price previously skyrocketed, hitting a record high of $132.75.

Trump revealed negotiation details with Chen Liwu during the interview. He directly requested a free 10% stake in the company for the country, and upon the immediate agreement, he felt remorse and jokingly remarked that he should have asked for more at the time. Trump also stated that Intel should currently be the world's largest company; if he had taken office earlier and imposed tariffs on imported chips to protect Intel, then today, the chip manufacturing business that originally belonged to TSMC would all belong to Intel. Regarding the future of this holding, he leans towards slowly reducing it without causing a significant drop in the stock price.