The U.S. stock market is the nation's destiny, and Trump is transforming America into a fund

Original Author: Jialiu

On the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States, Donald Trump is transforming America into a fund.

Last Monday, a few minutes before the US stock market opened, Trump sat in the Oval Office with a camera set up in front of him. The opening bells of the NYSE and NASDAQ were connected to the White House for him to ring remotely. As the bells sounded, he said into the camera, "With the ringing of the opening bell, these accounts will grow alongside our thriving 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 every newborn a birthday gift: an investment account bearing his name, seeded with $1,000, automatically invested in US stocks. Six million children were registered before the official launch.

The same week, his Treasury Department was dealing with another matter: $39 trillion in national debt. In fiscal year 2026, interest payments alone would exceed $1 trillion, averaging $1.7 billion per day. Every day, the Treasury had to find ways to pay the interest accrued from the previous day.

Over the past 18 months, the president, a former real estate developer, has done three seemingly unrelated things: direct government equity stakes in companies, investment accounts for newborns, and vying for equity in AI firms. However, they all point to the same goal: deeply intertwining the US stock market with America's national destiny.

The Eagle's $39 Trillion Debt

The starting point for this chess game isn't ambition, but anxiety.

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

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

The first two options are political suicide before the midterm elections, so the Trump administration will certainly not consider them. The third option requires the cooperation of the US central bank, the Federal Reserve, to lower interest rates. However, former Chair Jerome Powell refused to yield even when threatened with lawsuits and legal trouble by Trump. Current Chair Warsh would find it very unbecoming to announce 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. A real estate developer looks at a balance sheet differently than a politician: if you can't adjust the liability side, you enlarge the asset side. On the US government's past balance sheet, $39 trillion in liabilities were clear and present; but the asset side was vague, with the federal government owning virtually no financial assets that could be priced at market value.

So Trump's solution is to first use the powers held by the government—subsidies, appropriations, government contracts, export controls, and regulatory authority—as costs and bargaining chips in exchange for low-priced shares in large companies.

The first company Trump squeezed 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, making it the largest single shareholder of the chip giant. The brilliance of the deal lay in its funding source: $5.7 billion came from the chips subsidies originally allocated to Intel under the CHIPS Act passed in 2022, and $3.2 billion came from federal grants for a secure chip project. In other words, the government didn't spend a single new dollar; it paid with "checks it was going to give away anyway," receiving significant equity in return.

Trump himself was very proud. He announced on his social media platform, Truth Social, in all caps: "I paid ZERO for Intel, it's worth approximately $11 billion, all for America."

Later, discussing the deal publicly, he mentioned the 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 Cadence Design Systems for 12 years. Trump said Intel agreed too readily, "I should have asked for more." When criticized for this practice as shameful, he responded, "It's not shameful, it's called business." Asked whether government equity stakes in private companies would become the norm, his answer was, "Aren't tariffs the norm too?"

Perhaps to commemorate this good start, White House Economic Advisor Hassett even named the deal: "The down payment for the sovereign wealth fund."

A sovereign wealth fund is an institution where the government invests public funds as long-term capital. Singapore and Abu Dhabi have them, typically built from oil or resource revenue. The US never had one. In February 2025, Trump signed an executive order requiring Commerce Secretary Lutnick and Treasury Secretary Bessent to produce a formation plan within 90 days, but due to legal, funding, and political obstacles, the grand narrative version of this so-called "US Sovereign Wealth Fund" stalled.

However, the Intel deal clearly sent a signal: the shell for the US sovereign fund wasn't established under a "creative pretext," but "the bullet still flew."

The US Government Got Stakes in at Least 20 Companies for Next to Nothing

The effectiveness of Trump's Intel purchase was soon proven. Intel's stock price rose over 50% after the deal closed. By early 2026, the government's book value in its holdings had inflated to between $35 billion and $63 billion. Trump had turned a subsidy he was going to spend anyway into tens of billions in paper gains.

After completing "bold hypothesis" and "careful verification," the businessman's next conclusion was to replicate the model.

Following Intel, Trump's deal-making pace exceeded all expectations:

The Department of Defense acquired a 15% stake in MP Materials, the only US company with full 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 yet, gave up 10%, tied to a $2.26 billion federal loan restructuring. Trilogy Metals, a Canadian-listed mining company developing a copper-zinc mine in Alaska, handed over 10% plus warrants for an additional 7.5% (giving the government the right to buy more shares at an agreed price in the future) in exchange for a $35.6 million investment. When US Steel was acquired by Japan's Nippon Steel, it handed the White House a "golden share" with veto power—not an economic stake, but political power: the president can veto plant closures, headquarters relocation, or overseas production transfer. L3Harris, a major US defense technology company, exchanged $1 billion for equity in its rocket engine business. Nvidia and AMD, the two largest chip design companies, were unique: instead of shares, they handed over 15% of their chip sales revenue to China. By the end of January 2026, another US rare earth company, USA Rare Earth, had also joined the list.

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

In May 2026, Trump's approach 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 alone, while GlobalFoundries (one of the world's major chip foundries), D-Wave, Rigetti, Infleqtion, and other quantum startups shared the remaining amount. On the day of the news, the sector took off: Infleqtion surged over 33%, D-Wave rose 33%, Rigetti gained 30%, and even IonQ (another publicly traded quantum computing company), which wasn't on the list, went up 12%. Lutnick stated in a press release that the Trump administration is "leading the world into a new era of American innovation."

On prediction markets, traders are starting to focus on "who will be next to receive a government stake in 2026." Currently, IonQ has a 32% probability, defense AI unicorn Anduril Industries (a defense tech company founded by Oculus VR creator Palmer Luckey, focusing on AI-driven military unmanned systems) is at 31%, and Micron (one of the world's largest memory chip manufacturers) is at 28%.

Altman Voluntarily Offered $42.6 Billion in Shares

Besides sectors like defense, chips, and quantum computing, the "White House stock guru" Trump naturally wouldn't miss the hottest sector right now: AI.

The most interesting part is that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman himself personally placed this offer right in front of Trump.

Altman speaking at a White House/government event

According to reports from the US political news website NOTUS and the Financial Times, as early as early 2025, Altman proposed the concept of the government holding stakes in major AI companies to Trump, and subsequently met regularly with senior officials on this matter. In early June 2026, the consultations were formally exposed. In early July, the numbers hit the press: OpenAI proposed transferring 5% to the government. Based on its $852 billion valuation after a record funding round in March, this "gift" was worth approximately $42.6 billion.

And Altman's complete plan was even larger: not just OpenAI, but every top American AI company would contribute 5% to a government platform entity. The list includes Anthropic, the developer of Claude, founded by former core OpenAI team members and seen as the fastest-growing player in the enterprise AI market, as well as Google, Meta, and xAI. The revenue model would reference the Alaska Permanent Fund, a public fund established by Alaska using oil revenue that distributes dividends to every state resident annually. 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 cut through the noise on this relationship: the economics of AI are completely different from the internet. In the internet era, adding one more user cost almost nothing. 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 in the hands of Washington.

This means AI companies have a structural, not temporary, dependence on national-level infrastructure. And the more you depend on national resources, the heavier the government's bargaining chip becomes.

So the relationship between AI companies and the government is no longer as simple as "a startup hoping for less regulation." They cannot survive without government resources, and the government knows this. The past negotiation was: "We give you subsidies, you build a factory, hire people, and pay taxes." The current negotiation has become: "We give you computing power, electricity, contracts, and policy certainty. What does the public get in return?"

Industry insiders call this 5% an "insurance policy for regulation." Using equity in exchange for a looser regulatory environment, proactively resolving the risk of nationalization or forced breakup, while allowing Altman and others to embed themselves deeply in the seat of AI regulatory rule-making. Intel's precedent is right there: after the government's stake, Nvidia's $5 billion investment, the co-building of a Texas chip factory with Musk, and collaboration with Apple landed one after another, and the stock price took off.

A government shareholder isn't a cost; it's the strongest backing.

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

But of course, Trump needs to put pressure on those who don't pay the insurance premium.

Defense Secretary Hegseth announced on X (formerly Twitter) that Anthropic had been designated a "supply chain risk." This label was previously only used for suppliers that are foreign hostile entities and never on a US company. All defense contractors must provide written assurance not to use Claude. Trump then posted on Truth Social, ordering all federal agencies to "immediately cease" using Anthropic's technology. Anthropic didn't back down. On March 9th, they filed lawsuits simultaneously in San Francisco and Washington, accusing the blacklist of being an unconstitutional retaliation.

Anthropic CEO Amodei at a congressional hearing

With Intel's template, the batch replication of the Quantum Nine, and OpenAI's proactive 5% proposal, "who will be the next company to receive a government stake" has become a real trading theme on Wall Street. Following the government's stock-picking logic, one can map out three tiers.

The first tier consists of leading AI model companies. This is the group directly named in Altman's proposal. Besides OpenAI itself, there's Anthropic, xAI, Google, and Meta. Google and Meta are publicly traded, making a government stake technically easier to execute, but politically more sensitive. The variable for xAI lies with Musk himself. His relationship with Trump soured and briefly broke down after last year's DOGE project for government budget cuts, only recently being repaired. SpaceX completed its $86 billion IPO with a market cap of $2.2 trillion. When asked in a CNBC interview if Musk would donate SpaceX stock to the Trump Account, Trump replied, "I think he will." A week later, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell announced a donation of one share to the accounts of over 2 million children, worth approximately $320 million.

The second tier consists of AI's "foundational" companies. Analysts point out that if private capital cannot sustain AI's increasingly massive funding needs, the government would next consider taking stakes in data center companies supplying AI computing power and the supporting energy infrastructure companies. These companies may not sound as exciting as model companies, but they are where government resources—such as land, power grids, and nuclear power plant approvals—are most concentrated, and where the "subsidies for equity" logic is most straightforward.

The third tier consists of companies already in play or on the prediction market boards. After the Quantum Nine, the prediction market odds point to IonQ, Anduril, and Micron. Anduril is one of the highest-valued defense AI startups; Micron just donated $250 million to the Trump Account. In this game, a donation is itself a quote, signaling clearly: "I'm on your team; take care of me."

When US Stocks Become a Belief System

Let's look back at this baby fund.

For American newborns born between 2025 and 2028, after parents open an account, the Treasury automatically deposits $1,000. This money is mandatorily invested in an index fund tracking the S&P 500. The default target is SPYM, the lowest-fee S&P 500 ETF sponsored by State Street. Options include IVV, VTI, SPTM, and ITOT—all large-cap US or total market ETFs, with a maximum annual fee of 0.10%. Families can add up to $5,000 per year, deducted pre-tax, similar to a pension plan. Donations from employers, relatives, or charities are separate. The funds cannot be withdrawn until the child turns 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 zero-commission brokerages in the US.

The nonpartisan fiscal watchdog Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget calculates the plan will cost approximately $17 billion by 2028. The government's own projection is that the $1,000 will be worth at least $6,000 by the child's 18th birthday.

Corporate reactions are more telling than the policy itself. Dell Technologies founder Michael Dell and his wife donated $6.25 billion, covering approximately 25 million children under 10 in low-income zip codes, $250 each. Micron donated $250 million. Intel and Robinhood matched donations for their employees' children. BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, and Bank of America matched employee donations. Then there's the aforementioned 2 million+ shares of SpaceX stock from Shotwell. The Treasury subsequently announced it would accept large charitable donations in the form of publicly traded company stock.