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President Donald Trump has made the federal government Intel’s largest shareholder by approving a 10% stake in the ailing U.S. chipmaker. The move, which runs counter to Republican orthodoxy for generations, provoked rare condemnation from conservatives who usually support the president.

Trump, however, has promoted the deal as a savvy investment that will make the United States “richer and richer.” He has also suggested the Intel move is just the beginning. “I hope I’m going to have many more cases like it,” Trump said. His approach — essentially nationalizing a struggling pillar of U.S. industry — is a return to an economic policy the Republican Party once derided as industrial policy.

Trump’s critics are asking if the move crosses the line into socialism. For generations, socialism has been defined in part as government control over the means of production for society’s benefit. On that measure, critics say Trump’s move isn’t all that different from what goes on in China or Russia.

The move is not lost on those who see the political irony. When Barack Obama took control of Chrysler and General Motors in the financial crisis of 2008–2009, many conservatives at the time regarded the move as an act of emergency triage, aimed at saving classic American companies from imminent collapse.

Conservatives didn’t say Chrysler or GM had been nationalized. Yet if Obama had taken a 10% stake in Intel, Trump allies told the Wall Street Journal, conservative media would have accused the president of nationalizing the economy.

Trump has sought to distinguish the Intel case from his critics. He has argued that the deal is an investment, not a bailout. The grants he converted into equity — nearly $9 billion in funds the Biden administration has already provided to the company under the bipartisan Chips Act — became equity owned by the U.S. government. That swap, Trump has claimed, generated between $10 billion and $11 billion of value for taxpayers “overnight.” “Why are ‘stupid’ people unhappy with that?” Trump asked on Truth Social.

Reaction from conservatives was fast and furious. Larry Kudlow, Trump’s former top economic adviser, told Fox Business he was “very, very uncomfortable with that idea.” Steve Moore, another informal Trump adviser, was harsher. “I hate corporate welfare. That’s privatization in reverse. We want the government to divest of assets, not buy assets. So terrible, one of the bad ideas that’s come out of this White House,” Moore said.

National Review published an editorial saying “government shouldn’t get into the chip business.” Senator Thom Tillis called the deal a “semi-state-owned enterprise a la CCCP, the former Soviet Union.” Senator Rand Paul made the same point on Truth Social: “Wouldn’t the government owning part of Intel be a step toward socialism? Terrible idea.”

Progressive Senator Bernie Sanders, meanwhile, celebrated the move. Sanders applauded the government’s move to “steer our economy toward meeting the needs of our people, our nation, our planet.”

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick rushed to Trump’s defense during an interview with Laura Ingraham: “That is not socialism. That’s the best businessman in the United States of America in the Oval Office doing fair things for us.”

Intel has warned in a mandatory SEC filing about potential negative consequences from the deal, including a reduced ability to secure grants from the government in the future, damage to sales outside the U.S., and heavier regulation of its activities. Intel’s share price is up 4% in early trading after Trump’s announcement. But the company’s value is down by half, or around $110 billion, since the start of 2024.

The company already has an uphill battle in front of it. Intel announced in February that it was laying off 15% of its workforce. And Trump reportedly initially demanded CEO Lip-Bu Tan’s resignation because of the executive’s past connections to China, although he relented after meeting with the CEO in person at the White House.

“I liked him a lot, I thought he was very good,” Trump said.

The U.S. government is a non-voting shareholder, but the relationship will likely still put the federal government in a position of significant influence, however much Trump and the government may promise not to exercise it.

If Intel stabilizes and turns the corner, Trump can point to it as evidence of how the government is shoring up a pillar of American technology. But if it fails, American taxpayers will be on the hook. Trump has promised more moves like this, so the question of whether it’s socialism, capitalism, or Trumpism will likely only become louder.

At the very least, the Intel stake will be a watershed moment for the relationship between the federal government and the private sector, and how far Trump has changed the Republican Party’s economic policy.