The Trump administration has poured roughly $26.7 billion into 30 equity or quasi-equity deals across corporate America, acquiring stakes in companies ranging from chipmaker Intel to rare-earth miner MP Materials. The investments include a 9.9 percent stake in Intel now worth $42 billion, $400 million directed at MP Materials to weaken China’s hold on magnet supply chains, a so-called golden share retained in U.S. Steel as part of its sale to Japan’s Nippon Steel, and a burst of positions in quantum computing firms. But anyone hoping to track how the government is managing this unprecedented portfolio will find there is no consolidated ledger anywhere. The holdings are scattered across at least four agencies, with 17 deals funneled through Commerce, seven through Defense, six through the Development Finance Corporation, and two through Energy. Only one of those agencies, the Development Finance Corporation, has clear statutory authority to own equity at all, under a framework Congress built in 2018 for development deals abroad.
A Treasury spokesperson told Fortune that agencies report their equity interests in different ways depending on the legal authority behind each stake, which helps explain why some holdings amount to signed agreements while others remain closer to term sheets. Nine quantum computing deals that Commerce announced in a single week still sit in that murkier category. The most complete public accounting of Washington’s portfolio is not maintained by the government at all but by the Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank. Jonathan Hillman, the senior fellow who runs that tracker, said the announced deals are only the tip of the iceberg and that the real test will be whether Washington can build a system to manage its growing portfolio over time.
Even the best-documented stake raises questions. Intel’s August 2025 securities filings name the Department of Commerce as counterparty to a warrant and common stock agreement covering 4.3 million shares at $20.47 each, structured as a passive position with no board seat or information rights. Yet roughly two-thirds of those shares were delivered when the deal closed while the rest sit in escrow pending Pentagon milestones, meaning part of the government’s flagship holding is not actually in hand. The claw-back and profit-sharing provisions tied to Intel’s earlier $2.2 billion CHIPS Act grant were also stripped away. Ethics filings separately revealed that accounts held in President Donald Trump’s own name began buying Intel stock months after his administration’s stake sent shares soaring, though no insider trading has been alleged and the White House says his assets sit in a trust managed by his children.
Federal budget rules make the money equally hard to follow. Those rules were designed for grants and loans and treat an equity purchase as money out the door with little mechanism for recognizing returns, according to research by Council on Foreign Relations fellow William Henagan. That means Intel’s rise from an $8.9 billion position to one worth $42 billion appears nowhere in any budget document. The administration has never claimed otherwise and has hinted these stakes are just the beginning. Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, compared it to a down payment on a sovereign wealth fund after the Intel deal was announced, saying many countries already have them. Whether Washington builds the oversight apparatus that such a fund would demand remains an open question, one that during the last era of large-scale federal equity ownership, through TARP, even dedicated inspectors general found lacking.