Chairman of All Boards: The White House Shakedown of Corporate America

5 minutes read time.

In a move that would have been considered unfathomable by a generation of free-market conservatives, the Felonious Punk administration has appointed itself the de facto “chairman of all boards” of corporate America. The most audacious and alarming expression of this new reality came last week, with the administration’s acquisition of a 10 percent stake in the chipmaker Intel, a beleaguered but iconic American company. This is not a strategic investment or a coherent industrial policy. It is, as one conservative economist bluntly put it, an “opportunistic display of corporate shakedowns.” The Intel deal is the culmination of a disturbing pattern of behavior, a new and dangerous chapter in American capitalism where the power of the federal government is being wielded as a weapon of personal and political retribution, forcing private companies into deals that serve the president’s agenda, not the interests of their shareholders or the health of the economy.

The Anatomy of a Shakedown

The story of the Intel deal is a masterclass in coercion. The company, which has struggled with production delays and has lost ground to international competitors, was in a position of profound vulnerability. It was dependent on the final, $8.9 billion tranche of funding from the bipartisan CHIPS Act, a program initiated under the Biden administration to onshore critical semiconductor manufacturing. The Felonious Punk administration seized on this vulnerability. First, it applied personal pressure, with the president publicly attacking Intel’s CEO, Lip-Bu Tan, over his past business ties to China. Then came the deal. As the president himself explained, “People come in and they need something.”

What Intel needed was the CHIPS Act money. What the Felonious Punk demanded in return was a 10 percent equity stake in the company, acquired at a sharp discount. The administration also stripped away the Biden-era protections that had tied the funding to specific manufacturing milestones, giving Intel the cash immediately in exchange for the shares. This was not a negotiation between partners; it was a shakedown. The president’s own words confirm the transactional, almost predatory, nature of the arrangement: “I hope I’m going to have many more cases like it,” he declared.

The “Sovereign Wealth Fund” Smokescreen

In an attempt to provide a thin veneer of policy legitimacy to this ad-hoc interventionism, the administration has begun to rebrand its strategy as the creation of a U.S. “sovereign wealth fund.” White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett has described the Intel deal as a “down payment” on this new fund. This is a cynical and deeply misleading piece of rhetoric. Sovereign wealth funds, as they exist in countries like Norway or Singapore, are typically built on budget surpluses or revenue from state-owned natural resources, and they operate under a clear and transparent investment mandate.

The Felonious Punk administration’s model is the precise opposite. It is not built on surpluses, but on leveraging the regulatory and financial power of the state to extract concessions from vulnerable private companies. This is not state capitalism; it is a state-run protection racket. The “fund” is not a coherent investment strategy; it is a collection of assets acquired through political coercion. The goal is not long-term prosperity, but short-term political wins and the personal satisfaction of a president who sees every interaction as a zero-sum transaction.

A Crisis of Confidence

The immediate consequences of this new reality are already being felt. In a stunning SEC filing on Monday, Intel itself warned its own shareholders of the profound risks this government intervention poses to its business. The company, which derives three-quarters of its revenue from international sales, stated that the U.S. government becoming its largest shareholder could jeopardize those sales, trigger backlash from foreign governments, and lead to litigation. The filing also revealed that the government’s stake could rise to 15 percent if certain manufacturing thresholds are not met, further diluting the value for other shareholders and raising, as Intel put it, “a bunch of questions about government intervention in the economy.”

The broader effect is a profound and dangerous chilling of the investment climate. As the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has noted, “Businesses need certainty for planning.” But there can be no certainty when the rules of the road can be arbitrarily changed by a presidential tweet or a backroom deal. The message being sent to every other company in America, particularly those in critical sectors like technology and defense, is clear: your business decisions must now be based not on market logic, but on “political considerations.” This is a recipe for economic stagnation and a direct assault on the principles of free enterprise.

The End of Certainty

The Felonious Punk’s hostile takeover of Intel is more than just a single, troubling deal. It is a signal of a fundamental and dangerous shift in the relationship between the American government and the private sector. It is the repudiation of decades of conservative economic orthodoxy in favor of a chaotic, personality-driven system of corporate shakedowns. While the administration may tout its actions as a way to make America “RICHER, AND RICHER,” the reality is that it is injecting a profound and toxic level of political uncertainty into the heart of the economy. The grim advice from one strategist to corporate America—that the only answer is to “accept your fate” and give the White House a “win”—is a chilling testament to the new, authoritarian reality of doing business in the United States.