Chứng khoán Mỹ là vận mệnh quốc gia, Trump đang biến nước Mỹ thành một quỹ đầu tư

Original author: Jia Liu

On the 250th anniversary of 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 a camera set up before him. The opening bells of the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq were connected to the White House, and he rang them remotely. As the bells faded, he said into the camera, "As the opening bell rings, these accounts will grow along with 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 presented a birthday gift to every newborn in the country: an investment account bearing his name, 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: a national debt of $39 trillion. 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 cover the interest accrued from the day before.

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

The Eagle's $39 Trillion Debt

The starting point of this strategy is not ambition, but anxiety.

As of May 2026, the total US national debt has 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 approximately 123%. The national debt is growing by about $5 billion per day. 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, surpassing the defense budget. For every dollar the federal government takes in, it spends $1.33. Huatai Securities estimates that the deficit for fiscal year 2026 could reach $2.2 trillion, pushing the deficit rate to 7%.

Traditionally, there are three ways to address the anxiety over US national debt: increase taxes, cut spending, or inflate the debt away—meaning letting prices rise to devalue the real debt.

The first two options would be political suicide ahead of the midterm elections, so the Trump administration would certainly not consider them. The third option requires the cooperation of the US central bank, the Federal Reserve, in cutting interest rates. However, former Chair Powell refused to yield even under Trump's threats of legal trouble. The current Chair, Warsh, would find it highly unseemly to announce a rate cut directly under the current economic conditions.

So, Trump needed to find a new path.

And we all know that Trump's problem-solving approach 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 move the liability side, then grow the asset side. On the US government's past balance sheets, $39 trillion in liabilities was clear and present; the asset side, however, was vague. The federal government had very few financial assets that could be priced at market value.

So, Trump's solution was first to use the power the government holds—subsidies, grants, government contracts, export controls, and regulatory authority—as costs and bargaining chips to obtain cheap 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, or $20.47 per share, instantly becoming the largest single shareholder of the chip giant. The brilliance of the transaction lay in its funding source: $5.7 billion came from subsidies the CHIPS Act of 2022 would have granted to Intel anyway, and $3.2 billion came from federal funding for a secure chip project. In other words, the government didn't pay 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 media platform, Truth Social, he announced in all caps: "I paid ZERO dollars for Intel, it's worth about $11 billion, all for America."

Later, discussing the deal in a public setting, he mentioned his negotiations with Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger. Gelsinger is a Malaysian-American who became Intel's CEO in March 2025, having previously served as CEO of Cadence, a chip design software company, for 12 years. Trump said Intel agreed too readily, "I should have asked for more." When criticized for this approach as shameful, his response was, "It's not shameful, it's called business." Asked whether government stakes in private companies would become the norm, he replied, "Isn't that tariffs too?"

Perhaps to mark this promising start, White House economic advisor Hassett even gave the deal a name: "The down payment on 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, typically accumulated from oil or resource revenues. The US never had one. In February 2025, Trump signed an executive order mandating Commerce Secretary Lutnick and Treasury Secretary Bessent to present a plan within 90 days, but due to legal, funding, and political resistance, the grand narrative version of this "US Sovereign Wealth Fund" stalled.

However, the Intel deal clearly signaled a message: the shell for the US sovereign fund wasn't going to be "fabricated," but "the bullet had already flown."

This is the second attempt. The first failed because it was "too grand." The second attempt relied on one "backdoor" entry after another.

The US Government Has Acquired Stakes in at Least 20 Companies for "Free"

The impact of Trump's Intel position-building became evident quickly. Intel's stock price surged over 50% after the transaction closed, and by early 2026, the book value of the government's holding had swelled to between $35 billion and $63 billion. Trump had turned a subsidy he was obligated to spend into hundreds of billions in paper profits.

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

After Intel, Trump's rate 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, this made the DoD its largest shareholder. American Lithium, a startup developing a lithium mine in Nevada and yet to generate revenue, also gave up 10%, tied to a $2.26 billion federal loan restructuring. Trilogy Metals, a Canadian-listed miner developing copper-zinc deposits in Alaska, handed over 10% plus 7.5% in warrants (giving the government the right to buy more shares at a set price in the future) in exchange for a $35.6 million investment. US Steel, upon being acquired by Japan's Nippon Steel, ceded a "golden share" veto power to the White House—not an economic stake, but political power: the president can veto plant closures, headquarters relocations, or production transfers overseas. L3Harris, a major US defense technology company, exchanged $1 billion in its rocket engine business for equity. Nvidia and AMD, the two largest chip design companies, were unique; they handed over not equity, but a 15% share of their chip sales revenue to China. By late 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 already obtained equity, warrants, or golden shares in over 20 companies.

In May 2026, Trump's approach became more systematic. The government announced a one-time injection of $2 billion into nine quantum computing companies in exchange for equity. IBM received $1 billion of that, while GlobalFoundries (one of the world's major chip foundries), D-Wave, Rigetti, Infleqtion, and other quantum startups shared the rest. The sector took off on the news: Infleqtion surged over 33%, D-Wave rose 33%, Rigetti jumped 30%, and even IonQ, another quantum computing company not on the list, climbed 12%. Lutnick stated in the announcement that the Trump administration is leading the world into a new era of American innovation.

On prediction markets, traders began focusing on "who will be the next company 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, specializing in AI-driven military unmanned systems) comes in at 31%, and Micron (one of the world's largest memory chip makers) stands at 28%.

Altman Voluntarily Offered $42.6 Billion in Shares

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

Most interestingly, this time it was OpenAI CEO Sam Altman himself who proactively placed the offer on the table for Trump.

Altman speaking at White House/government event

According to reports from the American political news site 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. He subsequently met regularly with senior government officials on the matter. In early June 2026, the consultations were officially revealed. By early July, the figures hit the news: OpenAI proposed selling 5% of the company to the government. Based on its $852 billion valuation after a record funding round in March, this "gift" was worth approximately $42.6 billion.

Moreover, Altman's complete proposal was larger: it wasn't just OpenAI, but every leading US AI company contributing 5% to a government platform entity. The list likely included Anthropic, the Claude developer founded by OpenAI's former core team and the fastest-growing player in the enterprise AI market, as well as Google, Facebook parent Meta, and Elon Musk's AI company, xAI. The distribution model would mirror the Alaska Permanent Fund, a public fund established by Alaska from oil revenues that pays annual dividends to every state resident. Altman hopes the 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 host of the All-In podcast, explained this dynamic in a recent episode: the economics of AI are entirely different from the internet. In the internet era, adding one more user had almost no cost. In the AI era, every new user requires real GPUs, memory, electricity, and infrastructure. None of these can be provided by venture capital; they are all controlled by Washington.

This means AI companies' dependence on national infrastructure is structural, not temporary. And 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 as simple as "a startup wanting less regulation." They can't do without the government's resources, and the government knows it. The past negotiation was: "We'll give you subsidies, you build factories, hire people, and pay taxes." Now, it becomes: "We give you computing power, electricity, contracts, and policy certainty. What does the public get?"

Industry insiders call this 5% "regulatory insurance." Use equity to buy a favorable regulatory environment, preempt the risk of nationalization or forced breakup, and incidentally allow the Altmans of the world a deep seat at the table crafting AI rules. Intel's precedent is right in front: after the government's stake, Nvidia's $5 billion investment, the joint Texas chip factory with Musk, and partnerships with Apple followed in quick succession, sending the stock price soaring.

A government shareholder is not a cost; it's the strongest backer possible.

Of course, not everyone agrees with Altman. One notable name on the list is absent: Anthropic seems less willing. According to sources, Anthropic has not yet discussed equity divestiture with the government.

But for those who don't pay the insurance premium, Trump naturally has to crack down.

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

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei at a congressional hearing

With the Intel template, the batch replication of the quantum nine, and OpenAI's proactive submission of the 5% plan, "Which company will be next to get a government stake?" has become a real trading theme on Wall Street. Following the government's stock-picking logic, one can sketch out three tiers.

The first tier is frontier AI model companies. These are directly named in Altman's proposal. Besides OpenAI itself, they include Anthropic, xAI, Google, and Meta. Google and Meta are publicly traded; technically, it would be easier for the government to hold their shares, but the political implications are more sensitive. xAI's variable is Elon Musk himself. His relationship with Trump soured after the DOGE project for government budget cuts last year, leading to a rupture, which was only recently mended. SpaceX completed its $86 billion IPO, achieving a market cap of $2.2 trillion. In a CNBC interview, Trump was asked if Musk would donate SpaceX stock to the Trump Account. He 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, valued at about $320 million.

The second tier is the "foundational" AI companies. Analysts point out that if private capital cannot sustain AI's increasingly massive capital needs, the next targets for government equity stakes would be data center companies providing AI computing power and their supporting energy infrastructure companies. These companies may not sound as glamorous as the model companies, but they are where government resources like land, power grids, and nuclear plant approvals are most densely deployed, and where the "subsidies for equity" logic is most straightforward.

The third tier consists of companies already being traded or on the odds board. After the quantum nine, Prediction Market odds point towards IonQ, Anduril, and Micron. Anduril is one of the highest-valued defense AI startups; Micron recently donated $250 million to the Trump Account. In this game, a donation itself is a bid, sending a clear signal: "I'm on your team, take care of me." So, the trade has three tiers. The first tier is the model companies—expensive, strategic, publicly visible prizes. The second tier is the infrastructure companies—cheaper, more tangible, where government goods and services are directly swapped for equity. The third tier is the companies already signaling readiness.

When US Stocks Become a Faith

Let's look back at this children's fund.

For American newborns born between 2025 and 2028, once parents open an account, the Treasury automatically deposits $1,000. This money is forced into an index fund tracking the S&P 500. The default option is SPYM, the lowest-fee S&P 500 ETF from State Street. Alternatives include IVV, VTI, SPTM, ITOT—all US large-cap or total-market ETFs, with a maximum annual fee of 0.10%. Families can add up to $5,000 per year on a pre-tax basis, similar to a pension plan. Donations from employers, relatives, or charitable institutions are separate. The money cannot be withdrawn before age 18. Upon adulthood, the account automatically converts into an IRA, 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.

The nonpartisan fiscal watchdog Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget calculates this plan will cost approximately $17 billion by 2028. The government's own estimate is that $1,000 will grow to at least $6,000 by the time the child turns 18.

Corporate reactions have been more telling than the policy itself. Dell Technologies founder Michael Dell and his wife donated $6.25 billion, covering approximately