These days, the United States government is starting to look less like a regulator and more like a hedge fund or a venture capitalist firm. During his second term, President Donald Trump has pushed the White House deep into the business of picking market winners, demanding equity stakes in private companies, taking cuts from business deals and even seeking authority to take companies public. To date, the administration has committed more than $10 billion in taxpayer funds in exchange for ownership stakes in 10 companies spanning semiconductors, nuclear energy and rare earth minerals — sectors Trump argues are critical to national security and maintaining leadership in artificial intelligence.
This approach marks a sharp departure from market interventions of the past. Previous administrations largely relied on grants, loans and tax incentives to fund clean energy, emerging technologies and other projects that may be of national interest but are not yet commercially profitable. And during the 2008 financial crisis, the government took temporary equity stakes in General Motors, Chrysler and AIG to help stabilize the economy. But this year, the Trump administration has turned equity demands into a routine condition for federal support, transforming crisis-era methods into a standing investment strategy.
What Companies Has the Trump Administration Invested In?
The Trump administration has taken equity stakes or structured deals in at least 10 companies across critical tech and mining sectors, including:
- U.S. Steel
- MP Materials
- Intel
- Trilogy Metals
- Lithium Americas
- Vulcan Elements
- ReElement Technologies
- Westinghouse
- xLight
- Nvidia
Several of the companies that have agreed to an equity stake were previously promised funding under President Joe Biden’s CHIPS and Science Act, which provided $280 billion in incentives to boost the United States’ research, development and production of semiconductors. Trump has repeatedly criticized the law, saying the government received nothing in return for its investment. Since returning to office in 2025, his administration has withheld most of the CHIPS Act funds, transferred them to its new Investment Accelerator fund, and restructured some of the deals to include direct government ownership in exchange for some incentives.
Equity stakes are only part of the picture. Trump has used tariffs as a means of pressuring specific companies into manufacturing their products in the United States as well, and has increasingly inserted himself into private deals — most recently taking a 25 percent cut of Nvidia’s chip sales to China. His administration has also reduced tariffs for Japan and South Korea in exchange for billions of dollars in contributions into a fund dedicated to revitalizing American industry. Japan pledged $550 billion to the fund, and South Korea pledged $350 billion.
The president’s unorthodox strategy has raised several questions regarding its legality, ethics and economic merits. When the government starts picking winners and losers within an industry, economists say it can distort markets and create an uneven playing field. Corruption and cronyism is another concern, as has already been evidenced by White House officials and Trump donors profiting from these investments. The stock price of these companies almost always spike after the government announces an investment — but if these investments ultimately fail, it would be at the taxpayer’s expense.
This setup has drawn some comparisons to the Chinese government, whose state-owned enterprises dominate energy, defense and other vital sectors of its economy. While Trump’s approach is not quite socialism or communism, Greg Ip, The Wall Street Journal’s chief economics commentator, argues it’s more akin to state capitalism, which he describes as “a hybrid between socialism and capitalism in which the state guides the decisions of nominally private enterprises.” But at the same time, the administration is playing hardball with the very companies it is purporting to help, withholding funds and calling for executives to resign — negotiation tactics that Harvard economics professor Greg Mankiw compared to a shakedown from the Mafia.
Below, we break down the federal government’s portfolio of investments from 2025, which will likely continue to grow in 2026.
Companies the Trump Administration Has Taken a Stake In
U.S. Steel
The first instance of the Trump administration’s new investment strategy occurred in June, when the federal government acquired a nonfinancial ownership stake in U.S. Steel. The once-dominant American steelmaker has struggled to compete against China in recent years, and it was preparing to sell itself to Japan-based Nippon Steel. The Biden administration blocked that sale on national security grounds, but Trump allowed the deal to go through as long as the U.S. government retained a “golden share,” which gave it the ability to override company decisions that have an adverse effect on the United States. The government exercised its golden share in September, when it blocked the company from closing a steel facility in Illinois.
MP Materials
Rare earth minerals — particularly rare earth magnets — are critical to the auto, electronics and defense industries, where they’re used in everything from electric vehicle motors and laptop batteries to missile guidance systems and radar. The United States has always relied heavily on China to provide these materials, but after Trump announced tariffs on Chinese products in April, Beijing started limiting rare earth exports to the United States, forcing some American factories to close temporarily. The two governments have since brokered a truce, but the incident highlighted just how much leverage China holds over key segments of U.S. industry.
To reduce the United States’ reliance on China going forward, the Defense Department announced in July that it would acquire a 15 percent stake in Las Vegas-based MP Materials, one of the few U.S. companies that mines rare earth materials and produces rare earth magnets. As part of the deal, the government agreed to establish a 10-year price floor for MP’s products — nearly double China’s current market price — with the taxpayers covering the difference if prices fall below that threshold.
The Pentagon also purchased an initial $400 million in MP Materials stock to help expand its facilities, including a second magnet production plant that is expected to have ten times the output of its Fort Worth facility. All of the magnets produced at the new facility will be purchased by defense and commercial customers, according to the Defense Department, which will also provide a $150 million loan for MP Materials to expand its heavy rare earth separation capabilities at its Mountain Pass, California mine.
Intel
In August, the U.S. government invested $8.9 billion in chipmaker Intel in exchange for a 10 percent equity stake in the company. Intel agreed to the deal just two weeks after Trump publicly called for CEO Lip-Bu Tan to resign due to his investments in Chinese companies.
Much of that funding ($7.9 billion) was awarded under the CHIPS and Science Act, but only $2.2 billion was actually given to Intel. The unpaid $5.7 billion balance, combined with a previously awarded $3.2 billion grant, was used to fund the Trump administration’s investment in Intel stock — effectively converting subsidies into government ownership.
Founded in 1968, Intel was once the world’s top chipmaker, but it has fallen behind as the market evolved with smartphones and artificial intelligence. Today, advanced chip manufacturing is largely concentrated in Taiwan, a geopolitical chokepoint whose proximity to China — and the country’s’s claims over the island — pose a significant risk to global supply chains. The administration has framed its investment in Intel as a national security measure aimed at shoring up domestic chip production and reducing reliance on overseas suppliers.
Trilogy Metals
In October, the Defense Department invested $35.6 million and acquired a 10 percent stake in Trilogy Metals, a Canadian mining company with major mineral holdings in the United States. As part of the partnership, the department secured the right to appoint an independent member to Trilogy’s board of directors for three years, giving the federal government direct input in the company’s direction going forward.
Around the same time, Trump also approved the construction of a 211-mile road to the Ambler Mining District, an inaccessible region of northwestern Alaska that has large deposits of copper, cobalt, gallium and other precious metals. The project had previously been halted under Biden’s administration due to concerns about its impact on the environment, wildlife and the subsistence of indigenous tribes in the area. But Trump reversed that decision, arguing the district’s mineral potential outweighed those risks.
Lithium Americas
In October, the Energy Department announced it would take a 5 percent equity stake in Lithium Americas, a lithium mining company, and an additional 5 percent stake in the company’s joint venture with General Motors to develop the Thacker Pass lithium mine in Nevada. The Biden administration had previously approved a $2.26 billion federal loan for the project, but the Trump administration restructured the deal before releasing the first loan installment of $435 million.
The move targets one of the most acute supply chain vulnerabilities in America’s transition to clean energy. The United States currently produces less than 1 percent of the world’s lithium, a critical ingredient in the lithium-ion batteries used to power electric vehicles, renewable energy storage and consumer electronics. This deal will help Lithium Americas finance the construction of a facility that is expected to produce 40,000 tons of lithium carbonate per year, boosting domestic supply while giving the government a direct financial stake in one of the country’s largest lithium projects.
Vulcan Elements and ReElement Technologies
In November, the government announced it would be allocating $1.4 billion in incentives to two startups — Vulcan Elements and ReElement Technologies — which work together to process rare earth metals and create the magnets used in AI data centers, semiconductor fabrication equipment and a variety of defense technologies.
Vulcan received a $620 million loan from the Defense Department, as well as $50 million in CHIPS Program incentives and $550 million in private capital, to build and operate a facility that can produce 10,000 tons of rare earth magnets per year. ReElement Technologies, meanwhile, will receive an $80 million Defense Department loan, matched by private capital, to expand its capabilities to recycle end-of-life magnets, electronic waste and mined concentrates into high-purity rare earth oxides. After separating and purifying the materials, ReElement supplies the feedstock to Vulcan, which plans to scale its magnetic production from 10 tons per year to 10,000 tons per year.
In exchange for the funding, Vulcan agreed to give the Department of Commerce $50 million in equity. The Defense Department also retained the ability to purchase shares in both companies for a preset price in the future, giving the government a potential ownership stake across multiple layers of the rare earth supply chain.
Westinghouse
In November, the government announced it would provide financing and permitting for $80 billion in new nuclear reactors powered by Westinghouse’s reactor technology — an effort largely framed as a way to meet the surging energy demand of AI data centers.
The proposed partnership goes well beyond traditional subsidies. Under the terms outlined to investors, the government would be entitled to 20 percent of any revenue generated beyond $17.5 billion. If Westinghouse’s valuation reaches $30 billion or more, the government would also be able to require the company to go public. Company officials told investors that, under this scenario, the government could become an 8 percent shareholder in Westinghouse. Westinghouse’s owners — Cameco Corporation and Brookfield Asset Management — have said they would consider spinning off the nuclear firm as an independent company if it goes public.
xLight
In December, the government acquired $150 million in equity in xLight, a startup developing large free-electron lasers as an alternative light source for extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) — a chip production technique that uses lasers to imprint complex circuit designs onto silicon wafers. The leading producer of EUV machines is a Dutch company called ASML, whose massive lithography machines rely on lasers embedded directly inside the equipment. xLight, meanwhile, is developing a more precise laser generated by a particle accelerator, which would need to be housed within a separate facility outside the fabrication plant. The company plans to sell its laser to ASML for integration into its manufacturing process — but first, it needs to develop, prove and implement its technology by 2028.
The $150 million in government funding comes from the CHIPS Act, but unlike the original structure of the program, this deal gives the government $150 million in equity. The executive chairman of xLight’s board is former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, who was forced to resign in 2024.
Nvidia
Nvidia, the world’s dominant supplier of AI chips, has long sought to sell its semiconductors in China. But the Biden and Trump administrations have repeatedly blocked them on national security grounds, as they could help China gain an edge in the global AI race.
In August, Trump agreed to partially ease those restrictions, allowing Nvidia to sell a lower-powered AI chip known as H20 to China in exchange for a 15 percent cut of the sales. The deal ultimately collapsed after Chinese authorities told local tech companies not to buy the chips. Then, in December, the Trump administration allowed Nvidia to sell a more powerful AI chip, the H200 — this time in exchange for a 25 percent cut of the revenue. The arrangement marked one of the clearest examples yet of the federal government positioning itself not just as a regulator of trade, but as a direct financial participant in private-sector sales to China.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is the Trump administration investing in chipmakers and rare earth miners?
The administration frames these investments as critical for national security, AI leadership and reducing reliance on foreign supply chains — particularly in semiconductors, rare earths and advanced manufacturing.
How is the U.S. government using taxpayer money to buy stakes in private companies?
Through loans, grants and equity investments, the federal government provides funding in exchange for partial ownership or financial rights, sometimes including board seats, revenue sharing or veto powers over major corporate decisions.
Is it legal for the federal government to take equity stakes in private firms?
While previous presidential administrations have occasionally taken temporary stakes in private companies — like during the 2008 auto bailout, for example — routinely taking equity and influencing company decisions to this degree is unprecedented, raising several legal and ethical questions.
Could the government profit if these companies succeed?
Potentially. Many of the deals the Trump administration has entered into include equity stakes or revenue-sharing arrangements, meaning the government could earn returns if the companies perform well — though taxpayers also bear the risk of losses.
