What do you call it when the trump administration takes taxpayer money and invests roughly $26.7 billion across 30 equity or quasi-equity deals with private companies and corporations?
The U.S. government invested $27 billion in corporate stakes. Good luck finding them
The Trump administration has invested roughly $26.7 billion across 30 equity or quasi-equity deals, headlined by a 9.9% stake in chipmaker Intel that's now worth $42 billion.
Others include $400 million into rare-earth miner MP Materials to loosen China's grip on magnet supply chains, the "golden share" in U.S. Steel retained as a condition of its sale to Japan's Nippon Steel, or the flurry of stakes in quantum computing firms.
But with all that dealmaking, those wary of government's corruptive tendencies—and of President Donald Trump's own trading—might want to see some transparency. The portfolio, however, is nowhere to be found.
There is no consolidated ledger of the government's holdings; the stakes sit scattered across at least four agencies: 17 deals through Commerce, seven through Defense, six through the Development Finance Corporation, two through Energy. Only one of those, the Development Finance Corporation, has clear statutory authority to own equity at all, under a framework Congress built in 2018 for development deals abroad.
The White House did not immediately respond to Fortune's request for comment. A Treasury spokesperson said agencies report equity interests "in different ways" depending on the legal authority behind each stake.
Some of the "stakes" are signed agreements, while others, including nine quantum computing deals Commerce announced in a single week, remain more ambiguous, closer to term sheets. The most complete public accounting of Washington's portfolio is kept by the Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank.
"The deals that have been announced to date are only the tip of the iceberg," Jonathan Hillman, the Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow who maintains that tracker, told Fortune, "and the real test will be whether Washington can build a system to effectively manage its growing portfolio of investments over the long run."
The best-documented stake in the portfolio is the biggest one. Intel's August 2025 securities filings name the shareholder: the United States Department of Commerce, counterparty to a "Warrant and Common Stock Agreement" covering 433.3 million shares at $20.47 apiece. It's a passive stake, with no board seat or information rights, and the government has agreed to vote with Intel's board on most matters.
Yet some aspects of the deal, in the filings, look strange. Roughly two-thirds of the shares were delivered to Commerce when the deal closed; the rest sit in escrow to be released as Intel hits milestones under a Pentagon chip program, meaning a slice of the government's marquee holding is not yet in the government's hands. The claw-back and profit-sharing provisions attached to Intel's earlier $2.2 billion CHIPS Act grant were also eliminated. Grants have strings that these stocks don't.
In addition, ethics filings revealed that accounts held in the president's own name began buying Intel in March, months after his administration's stake sent the stock soaring. No insider trading has been alleged, and the White House says his assets sit in a trust managed by his children; but Trump's personal holdings are unprecedented for the modern presidency.
For the government's stakes in private companies—such as Vulcan Elements, xLight, and others—no public securities filings with the SEC exist at all.
Even where the shares can be found, the money is tricky to follow. Federal budget rules, mostly designed for grants and loans, treat an equity purchase as an outlay—money out the door—with very little mechanism for recognizing what comes back, according to research by William Henagan, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. That means the Intel position's rise from $8.9 billion to $42 billion appears in no budget document.
The Development Finance Corporation, established by Congress in 2018 to make equity investments abroad, is one exception. But the framework has a narrow lens: it was designed for financing ports in developing countries. Yet now it is the closest thing Washington has to a legal template for owning chipmakers.
A DFC spokesperson told Fortune it records its equity postions as investment assets and manages the ownership on a case-by-case basis.
The federal government has held corporate equity at scale once before, and it did so under supervision. The Troubled Asset Relief Program, the $700 billion rescue fund Congress created in October 2008 at the height of the financial crisis, came with a statutory special inspector general who filed quarterly reports to Congress, plus a congressional oversight panel and standing GAO audits to boot.
But even that apparatus was judged insufficient: in 2009, the program's own inspector general told Congress that taxpayers weren't being told what recipients were doing with their money.
Today's sprawling portfolio has none of that. The administration, for its part, has never claimed otherwise; it has hinted the stakes are the start of something bigger.
"It's like a down payment on a sovereign wealth fund, which many countries have," Kevin Hassett, the director of the National Economic Council, told CNBC after the Intel deal was announced.
https://finance.yahoo.com/economy/policy/articles/u-government-invested-27-billion-120000768.html
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