Pentagon is 'thinking' about taking equity stakes in defense contractors

8 belter 4 8/26/2025, 1:26:42 PM cnbc.com ↗

Comments (4)

bix6 · 4h ago
This is starting to get real concerning. All our largest companies are going to have gov ownership now?
belter · 2h ago
Big Tech wouldn’t confront the bully and sat behind him at the inauguration. That cowardice will cost Azure and AWS a stake in their company.
aurareturn · 4h ago
So from Trump's point of view, he thinks the government should get a piece of companies that rely on government money. Ok. I can understand.

From a market/capitalism point of view, there will always be a conflict of interest. The US government would be biased in awarding contracts to companies it owns even if competitors offers are better.

amalcon · 3h ago
The thing that drives me nuts is that this is extremely similar to a corporate tax. By itself this is fine - I actually favor corporate taxes in at least some situations. The problems are:

- It is being imposed at least semi arbitrarily, which is obviously a massive corruption risk. You point out part of the risk, but there are other parts too.

- This administration both ran and executed on corporate tax cuts. Backdoor re-introducing a very similar thing does not give confidence.

If the policy was to take a stake in the S&P 500 or something, and it was not implemented by an administration that is otherwise leaning into corporate tax cuts, I would be basically fine with it.