Former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley condemned the Trump administration’s decision to take a 10 percent stake in Intel.
“Biden was wrong to subsidize the private sector with the Chips Act using our tax dollars. The counter to Biden is not to lean in and have the government own part of Intel,” Haley, who was the UN ambassador during President Trump’s first term, stated Saturday on social platform X. “This will only lead to more government subsidies and reduced productivity. Intel will become a test case of what not to do.”
The president announced the agreement between the U.S. government and the major chipmaker on Friday, stating that the U.S. “paid nothing for these Shares, and the Shares are now valued at approximately $11 Billion Dollars.”
“This is a great Deal for America and, also, a great Deal for INTEL. Building leading-edge Semiconductors and Chips, which is what INTEL does, is fundamental to the future of our Nation,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
The Hill has reached out to the White House for comment.
Earlier this month, the president called for the company’s CEO Lip-Bu Tan to resign, shortly after Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) wrote to Intel about worries regarding Tan’s connections to China.
Earlier this week, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick suggested that part of the motivation for making the deal with Intel is to potentially relocate some chip manufacturing to the U.S.
“We cannot rely on Taiwan, which is 9,500 miles away from us and only 80 miles from China. We don’t want 99 percent of leading-edge chips made in Taiwan. We want to produce them here,” Lutnick said while on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
“One of those pieces is it would be lovely to have Intel be capable of making a U.S. node or a U.S. transistor, driving that in America,” Lutnick stated.
Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.), a libertarian-minded GOP lawmaker, criticized the effort to secure 10-percent a stake in Intel as a “terrible idea” and a “step toward socialism.”
The administration has gotten support from self-described democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
“No. Taxpayers should not be providing billions of dollars in corporate welfare to large, profitable corporations like Intel without getting anything in return,” Sanders said in a statement on Friday.
“If microchip companies make a profit from the generous grants they receive from the federal government, the taxpayers of America have a right to a reasonable return on that investment,” the Vermont senator added.
