Trump tells Fortune he should have asked for bigger Intel stake

May 18 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said he "should have asked for more" of a stake in Intel on behalf of the U.S. government, in an interview with Fortune magazine published on Monday. 

 

The Trump administration last year took a 10% stake in Intel and announced an investment of about $10 billion in the chipmaker for building or expanding factories in the U.S. 

 

Eight months after the deal, the government’s Intel position has grown to be worth more than $50 billion.

"Do I get credit for it? Does anybody even know I did that?" Trump told Fortune.

 

When he was asked what the government’s exit strategy could be, the Fortune report said Trump believed he could sell shares slowly over time without causing the stock to plummet. 

 

Trump said: "Intel should be the biggest company in the world right now." Referring to TSMC ’s chip dominance, he said: "Intel would have all that business now," had he been the president earlier. 

 

"If I had been president when all these companies started sending their chips in from China, I would have put a tariff on that would have protected Intel," he said. 

 

Fortune said Trump gave the interview before his first visit to Beijing since 2017. The visit ended on Friday with no major breakthroughs on trade or tangible ‌help from Beijing to end the more than two-month-old U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.

 

(Reporting by Ananya Palyekar and Akanksha Khushi in Bengaluru; Editing by Alex Richardson and Barbara Lewis)