The US stock market is the national destiny, and Trump is transforming the United States into a fund

Original Author: Jia Liu

In the 250th year since the founding of the United States, Trump is transforming the country into a fund.

Last Monday, just minutes before the US stock market opened, Trump sat in the Oval Office with cameras set up in front of him. The opening bells of the NYSE and Nasdaq were connected to the White House, and he rang them remotely. As the bell sounded, he said to the camera, “As the opening bell rings, these accounts will grow alongside our booming economy. Just this week, $800 million in new capital will be invested in the stock market for America’s children.”

This was the first trading day after the launch of the “Trump Account.” Two days earlier, on July 4th, the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding, he gave a birthday gift to every newborn: an investment account named after him, containing $1,000, automatically invested in US stocks. Six million children had already registered before the launch.

That same week, his Treasury Department was dealing with another matter: the $39 trillion national debt. In fiscal year 2026, interest payments alone were set to exceed $1 trillion, averaging $1.7 billion per day. Every day, the Treasury had to find a way to pay the interest left over from the day before.

Over the past 18 months, the president, a former real estate developer, has done three seemingly unrelated things: direct government equity investment in companies, opening investment accounts for newborns, and seeking equity stakes in AI companies. But they all point towards the same goal: deeply binding the US stock market to the nation’s destiny.

The Eagle's $39 Trillion Debt

The starting point of this strategy isn't ambition; it's anxiety.

As of May 2026, total US national debt surpassed $39 trillion, approaching $40 trillion. The debt scale has already exceeded the size of the entire US economy, with a debt-to-GDP ratio of about 123%. New national debt increases by roughly $5 billion daily. The Congressional Budget Office projects that interest payments alone will exceed $1 trillion in fiscal year 2026, accounting for nearly 14% of total federal spending, higher than the defense budget. For every dollar the federal government takes in, it spends $1.33. Huatai Securities estimates the deficit could reach $2.2 trillion in fiscal year 2026, pushing the deficit ratio to 7%.

Traditionally, there are three ways to resolve the anxiety over US national debt: raise taxes, cut spending, or inflate the debt away (letting price increases dilute the real value of the debt).

The first two options are political suicide ahead of the midterm elections and are certainly off the table for the Trump administration. The third option requires the cooperation of the US central bank, the Federal Reserve, to lower interest rates. But former Chair Jerome Powell, even under threats and lawsuits from Trump, refused to give in. The current Chair, Kevin Warsh, would face an extremely awkward situation if he announced a rate cut directly under the current economic conditions.

So Trump needed to find a new path.

And as we all know, Trump’s approach to solving problems has always come from his lifelong experience in business. Real estate developers see balance sheets differently than politicians: if you can't adjust the liability side, you make the asset side bigger. On the US government's previous balance sheet, the $39 trillion in liabilities was clear and undeniable; the asset side, however, was vague, with the federal government holding almost no financial assets priced by the market.

So Trump’s solution is to first use the government's existing powers—subsidies, appropriations, government contracts, export controls, and regulatory authority—as costs and bargaining chips to acquire low-priced shares in major companies.

The first company Trump squeezed for value was Intel.

On August 22, 2025, the US government announced it would acquire a 9.9% stake in Intel, one of the world's largest semiconductor manufacturers, for $8.9 billion, at $20.47 per share, instantly becoming the chip giant's largest single shareholder. The brilliance of the deal lay in its funding source: $5.7 billion came from the subsidies originally allocated to Intel under the 2022 CHIPS Act, and $3.2 billion came from federal grants for secure chip projects. This meant the government didn't spend a single new dollar; it exchanged "checks it was going to give away anyway" for a substantial equity stake.

Trump himself was very proud. On his social platform, Truth Social, he announced in all capital letters: "I paid ZERO dollars for Intel. It is worth approximately $11 BILLION, ALL FOR AMERICA."

Later, talking about the deal in a public setting, he mentioned his negotiation process with Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan. Tan, a Malaysian-American, became Intel's CEO in March 2025, having previously served as CEO of the chip design software company Cadence for 12 years. Trump said Intel agreed too readily, "I should have asked for more." When criticized for this practice being shameful, he responded, "It's not shameful; it's business." Asked if government equity in private companies would become the norm, he replied, "Aren't tariffs the norm too?"

Perhaps to mark this good start, White House economic advisor Kevin Hassett named the deal: "the down payment for a sovereign wealth fund."

A sovereign wealth fund is an institution where the government invests public funds as long-term capital. Examples exist in Singapore and Abu Dhabi, usually funded by oil or resource revenues. The US never had one. In February 2025, Trump signed an executive order requiring Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to present a plan within 90 days, but the grand narrative of this "US Sovereign Wealth Fund" stalled due to legal, funding, and political obstacles.

However, the Intel deal clearly signaled that while the shell of the US sovereign fund wasn't formally established, "the bullets were still flying."

The US Government "Zero-Cost" Acquired Shares in at Least 20 Companies

The effectiveness of Trump's Intel position was quickly proven. Since the deal closed, Intel's stock price rose over 50%. By early 2026, the market value of the government's holdings had ballooned to between $35 billion and $63 billion. Trump had turned a subsidy he was obligated to spend into tens of billions in paper profits.

Having completed the "bold hypothesis" and "careful verification," the businessman's next conclusion was replication.

After Intel, Trump's pace of deal-making exceeded everyone's expectations:

The Department of Defense acquired a 15% stake in MP Materials, the only US company with complete rare earth mining and processing capabilities, located at the Mountain Pass mine in California, making the DOD its largest shareholder. Americas Lithium, a startup developing a lithium mine in Nevada with no revenue at the time, gave up a 10% stake tied to a $2.26 billion federal loan restructuring. Trilogy Metals, a Canadian-listed miner developing a copper-zinc mine in Alaska, handed over a 10% stake plus 7.5% in warrants (giving the government the right to buy more shares at an agreed price in the future) in exchange for a $35.6 million investment. U.S. Steel, amidst its acquisition by Japan's Nippon Steel, granted the White House a "golden share" with veto power – not an economic stake but political power: the president can veto closing plants, moving headquarters, or transferring production overseas. L3Harris, a major defense technology company, exchanged $1 billion for equity in its rocket engine business. Nvidia and AMD, the two largest chip design companies, were a special case, not giving up shares but agreeing to a 15% revenue share on chip sales to China. By the end of January 2026, another US rare earth company, USA Rare Earth, had joined the list.

According to the Cato Institute, a prominent free-market think tank, this administration has obtained equity, warrants, or golden shares in over 20 companies.

In May 2026, Trump's playbook became more industrialized. The government announced a one-time $2 billion investment in nine quantum computing companies in exchange for equity. IBM received $1 billion exclusively, while GlobalFoundries (a major semiconductor foundry), D-Wave, Rigetti, Infleqtion, and other quantum startups shared the rest. On the day of the announcement, the sector surged: Infleqtion skyrocketed over 33%, D-Wave rose 33%, Rigetti jumped 30%, and even IonQ (another publicly listed quantum computing company not on the list) gained 12%. Lutnick stated in the announcement that the Trump administration was "leading the world into a new era of American innovation."

On prediction markets, traders started focusing on "who will be invested in by the government in 2026." Currently, IonQ has a 32% probability, defense AI unicorn Anduril Industries (founded by Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey) 31%, and Micron Technology (one of the world's largest memory chip makers) 28%.

Altman Voluntarily Offered $42.6 Billion in Shares

Besides sectors like defense, chips, and quantum computing, "White House Stock Guru" Trump naturally wouldn't miss the hottest sector of the moment: AI.

What's most interesting is that this time, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman personally handed it to him.

Altman speaking at a White House/government event

According to reports by the US political news site NOTUS and the Financial Times, as early as early 2025, Altman proposed to Trump the concept of the government holding shares in major AI companies, meeting regularly with senior administration officials afterward. In early June 2026, the consultations were officially exposed. In early July, the figures appeared in print: OpenAI proposed selling 5% to the government. Based on its $852 billion valuation from a record funding round in March, this "gift" was worth approximately $42.6 billion.

And Altman's full plan was even larger: not just OpenAI, but every top US AI company would contribute 5% to a government platform entity. The list could include Anthropic, the developer of Claude, founded by former core OpenAI team members and the fastest-growing in the enterprise AI market, along with Google, Meta (Facebook's parent company), and Elon Musk's AI company xAI. The revenue model would reference the Alaska Permanent Fund, a public fund established by Alaska using oil revenue to pay annual dividends to every state resident. Altman hopes an AI version could also distribute dividends to the public.

Why would a company preparing for one of the largest IPOs in history voluntarily offer $42.6 billion?

Chamath, a well-known Silicon Valley investor and one of the hosts of the All-In podcast, recently pointed out the underlying relationship on an episode: "The economics of AI are completely different from the internet. In the internet era, adding a user had almost no cost. In the AI era, every new user requires real GPUs, memory, electricity, and infrastructure. None of these things can be provided by venture capital; they are all controlled by Washington."

This means AI companies' dependence on national-level infrastructure is structural, not temporary. The more you depend on national resources, the stronger the government's bargaining position becomes.

So the relationship between AI companies and the government is no longer simply about "startups wanting less regulation." They can't function without government resources, and the government knows it. Past negotiations were: "We give you subsidies; you build factories, hire people, and pay taxes." The negotiation now is: "We give you computing power, electricity, contracts, and regulatory certainty. What does the public get?"

Industry insiders call this 5% an "insurance policy against regulation." Exchanging equity for a favorable regulatory environment, preemptively mitigating the risk of nationalization or forced breakup, and allowing the Altmans of the world a deep seat at the table in shaping AI regulations. Intel's precedent is right there: after the government's investment, Intel secured a $5 billion investment from Nvidia, built a Texas chip fab with Musk, and landed collaborations with Apple. Its stock price took off.

Having the government as a shareholder isn't a cost; it's the most powerful backer you could have.

Of course, not everyone agrees with Altman. There's one notable absentee from the list: Anthropic seems less willing. According to insiders, Anthropic has not discussed selling equity with the government.

But for those who don't pay the "insurance premium," Trump naturally flexes his muscles.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced on X that Anthropic had been designated a "supply chain risk." This label was previously only used for suppliers from foreign hostile entities and had never been applied to a US company. All defense contractors were required to provide written assurances that they would not use Claude. Trump followed up with a post on Truth Social, ordering all federal agencies to "immediately stop" using Anthropic's technology. Anthropic did not back down. On March 9th, it simultaneously filed lawsuits in San Francisco and Washington, D.C., alleging the blacklist was an unconstitutional retaliatory measure.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei at a Congressional hearing

With Intel's template, the mass replication of the "Quantum Nine," and OpenAI's proactive 5% offer, "Who will be invested in next?" has become a real trading theme on Wall Street. Following the government's stock-picking logic, we can outline three tiers.

Tier 1: Frontier AI Model Companies. These are the directly named companies in Altman's proposal. Besides OpenAI itself, there's Anthropic, xAI, Google, and Meta. Google and Meta are publicly traded, making government ownership technically easier but politically more sensitive. The wildcard for xAI is Elon Musk himself. His relationship with Trump soured after the DOGE project last year, leading to a falling out, but it was recently repaired. SpaceX completed an $86 billion IPO, reaching a $2.2 trillion market cap. When asked in a CNBC interview if Musk would donate SpaceX stock to Trump Accounts, Trump replied, "I think he will." A week later, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell announced a donation of one share (worth about $320 million) to accounts of over 2 million children.

Tier 2: AI "Foundation" Companies. Analysts point out that if private capital can't sustain AI's enormous funding needs, the government will next consider investing in data center companies that provide computing power for AI and the supporting energy infrastructure companies. These companies might not be as glamorous as the model companies, but they are where government resources (like land, grid access, and nuclear power approvals) are deployed most intensively, making them the most logical fit for the "subsidies for equity" strategy.

Tier 3: Companies Already in Negotiations or on the Table. Following the "Quantum Nine," prediction markets point towards IonQ, Anduril, and Micron. Anduril is one of the highest-valued defense AI startups; Micron recently donated $250 million to Trump Accounts. In this game, a donation itself is a bid, signaling clearly: "I'm on your team; take care of me."

When the US Stock Market Becomes a Faith

Let's circle back to this children's fund.

For US newborns born between 2025 and 2028, the Treasury automatically deposits $1,000 into an account opened by their parents. This money is mandatorily invested in an index fund tracking the S&P 500. The default is SPYM, the lowest-fee S&P 500 ETF managed by State Street. Options include IVV, VTI, SPTM, and ITOT – all US large-cap or total-market ETFs with annual fees capped at 0.10%. Families can contribute up to $5,000 per year, deducted pre-tax (similar to a pension plan), with separate allowances for donations from employers, relatives, or charities. The funds cannot be withdrawn until age 18. Upon adulthood, the account automatically converts into an IRA (Individual Retirement Account), the most common long-term retirement savings vehicle in the US. The Bank of New York Mellon acts as custodian, and the accompanying app is co-designed by Robinhood, one of the largest commission-free brokerages in the US.

The nonpartisan fiscal watchdog Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates this plan will cost about $17 billion by 2028. The government's own projection is that the initial $1,000 will be worth at least $6,000 by the time the child turns 18.

The corporate response is more interesting than the policy itself. Dell Technologies founder Michael Dell and his wife donated $6.25 billion to cover 250 million children under 10 in low-income zip codes with $250 each. Micron donated $250 million. Intel and Robinhood made matching contributions for their employees' children. Then there was Shotwell's donation of over 2 million SpaceX shares. The Treasury quickly announced it would accept large charitable donations in the form of publicly traded company stock.

The Trump Account doesn't directly fund AI companies. It does something slower and deeper: cultivate a