{"id":177191,"date":"2025-08-26T14:07:21","date_gmt":"2025-08-26T14:07:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/177191\/"},"modified":"2025-08-26T14:07:21","modified_gmt":"2025-08-26T14:07:21","slug":"trump-pentagon-weighs-equity-stake-in-lockheed-lutnick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/177191\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump Pentagon weighs equity stake in Lockheed: Lutnick"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Commerce<\/p>\n

Top officials at the Pentagon are “thinking about” whether the U.S. should acquire equity stakes<\/a> in leading defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin<\/a>, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick<\/a> said Tuesday.<\/p>\n

The Cabinet secretary, in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box<\/a>,” revealed the government’s interest in taking those stakes days after the U.S. government acquired 10% of Intel<\/a> stock in a roughly $9 billion deal<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Lutnick was asked if the Trump administration would repeat that move with other companies that do business with the government.<\/p>\n

“Oh there’s a monstrous discussion about defense,” Lutnick replied.<\/p>\n

Lockheed, which makes most of its revenue from federal contracts, is “basically an arm of the U.S. government,” he said.<\/p>\n

Read more CNBC politics coverage<\/p>\n

“But what’s the economics of that? I’m going to leave that to my Secretary of Defense and the deputy Secretary of Defense,” he added.<\/p>\n

“These guys are on it and they’re thinking about it.”<\/p>\n

Lockheed and the Pentagon did not immediately respond to CNBC’s requests for comment.<\/p>\n

Lockheed is the world’s top defense company by revenue, according to DefenseNews’ 2024 list<\/a>. Other top U.S. contractors include RTX<\/a>, Northrop Grumman<\/a>, General Dynamics<\/a> and Boeing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

President Donald Trump<\/a>‘s move to take ownership of a chunk of Intel, an embattled chipmaker, is a major escalation in his efforts to achieve his economic goals by exerting more and more government control over the private economy.<\/p>\n

Trump said Monday that he would make similar deals “all day long<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

Lutnick said Friday<\/a> that the agreement Trump struck with Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan “strengthens U.S. leadership in semiconductors, which will both grow our economy and help secure America’s technological edge.”<\/p>\n

But the move has drawn heated criticism \u2014 including from some conservatives, who warn that Trump’s action cuts against free-market principles and poses risks for both Intel and the economy.<\/p>\n

“The most immediate risk is that Intel’s decisions will increasingly be driven by political rather than commercial considerations,” economist Scott Lincicome of the libertarian Cato Institute wrote in a Washington Post op-ed<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., wrote in an X post<\/a>, “If socialism is government owning the means of production, wouldn’t the government owning part of Intel be a step toward socialism?”<\/p>\n

\"Watch<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Top officials at the Pentagon are “thinking about” whether the U.S. should acquire equity stakes in leading defense…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":177192,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[166,14827,76,11732,81,262,77,69,3350,51304,51,17785,43930,51309,50,51326,80,51327,134,158,52,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-177191","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-aerospace-and-defense-industry","9":"tag-boeing-co","10":"tag-breaking-news-politics","11":"tag-breaking-news-technology","12":"tag-business-news","13":"tag-defense","14":"tag-donald-j-trump","15":"tag-donald-trump","16":"tag-foreign-policy","17":"tag-general-dynamics-corp","18":"tag-headlines","19":"tag-howard-lutnick","20":"tag-intel-corp","21":"tag-lockheed-martin-corp","22":"tag-news","23":"tag-northrop-grumman-corp","24":"tag-politics","25":"tag-raytheon-technologies-corp","26":"tag-stock-markets","27":"tag-technology","28":"tag-top-stories","29":"tag-united-states"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115095459825412524","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177191\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}