With Republicans in charge of the White House and Congress, President Donald Trump has embedded the federal government in private sector companies' affairs in unprecedented ways. That could change once Trump's Democratic adversaries take over the House and Senate following the blue wave midterm.
Democrats, planning to root out alleged corruption involving Trump, his family and their business associates, have signaled they will closely scrutinize companies that have curried the president's favor.
Their investigations may extend to Intel and the dozens of other companies that have clinched equity stakes with the government during Trump's second term. Democratic lawmakers in July asked law firm Skadden Arps for details about its involvement in the Intel deal.
The dynamic could affect how Trump approaches relationships with private sector companies, after spending two years involving the government in their affairs through stock agreements or, in the case of U.S. Steel, acquiring a "golden share" when the company was acquired by Nippon Steel.
U.S. Steel CEO David Burritt is scheduled to speak Wednesday with CNBC's Megan Cassella about what's next for U.S. industry at the B20 summit hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
The U.S. Steel intervention turned out to be just the beginning of the U.S. government taking stakes in companies, a highly unusual move stateside. A month after acquiring the golden share, the Trump administration agreed to a $400 million stock deal with rare-earths company MP Materials. The month after that, Trump announced the U.S. would take a 10% stake in chipmaker Intel.
By January, one year into Trump's second term as president, the administration had established some form of equity position in 14 companies, according to the CATO Institute's tracker. That number skyrocketed to 41 by November, including nine such announcements in May alone, the tracker shows. The holdings include both publicly traded and privately held companies, and CATO tracks deals that are closed as well as others that have been made public but are still being negotiated.
Following Republicans' decisive defeat in the Nov. 3 midterm election, the federal government has not revealed any new stock positions. But Trump, entering lame-duck status and on the verge of losing political power over Congress, could keep trying to steer his government to forge more equity deals with companies, said Indiana University associate professor Sarah Bauerle Danzman, who researches the intersection of national security and investment policy.
"He might feel he has less to lose," Bauerle Danzman, who is also a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, told CNBC.
White House spokesman Matthew Middleton told CNBC in a statement, "Through voluntary equity investments in willing companies, the Trump Administration has partnered with the private sector to rebuild America's industrial base and bring critical production back home."
"Moving forward, the President is willing to work with anyone to advance solutions that strengthen our economy and put more money back in the pockets of American workers," Middleton said.
But Trump's so-far unimpeded efforts may face sudden resistance once Democrats take majority control of the House and Senate in January.
Democratic lawmakers are openly gearing up to score wins against Trump and his associates as they vow to crack down on alleged rampant government corruption.
Those probes are expected to center on tech giants like Apple, Meta Platforms and Elon Musk's companies, whose executives have spent millions cozying up to the administration. Democrats are also poised to dig into potential conflicts related to the bevy of critical-minerals deals Trump has struck. Lawmakers of both parties are also looking at Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, the close Trump ally engulfed in scandal after admitting an extramarital affair with a suspected Chinese spy.
The administration's equity interventions could become a target in that mission, said Bauerle Danzman, predicting that Democrats might seek to boost oversight efforts even if they don't try to cancel the existing stock arrangements.
The next Congress could try to ensure the government is taking stakes that are "forwarding genuine national security priorities" and that do not provide "special favors to political and family connections," she said.
"The story there is more about kind of tying these issues to ones of accountability and anti-corruption, as opposed to necessarily cost," Bauerle Danzman said.
It's also not clear how strongly Republicans would try to defend Trump's golden share or his government's equity stakes should they become a Democratic target.
Conservatives traditionally espouse free markets and denounce excessive government meddling in the private sector. Republicans, including Trump, spent much of the midterm campaign warning that Democrats aim to destroy the U.S. capitalist system and impose economy-killing big-government socialism.
Some Republicans have criticized the Trump administration's corporate interventions, but the moves have received little pushback from the president's party overall.
But in the wake of a crushing electoral defeat, some Republicans "might feel emboldened and actually join with the Democrats" in trying to clamp down on Trump, Bauerle Danzman said.
