On Friday, President Trump struck a deal with Intel. In exchange for around $9 billion in grants that the federal government awarded to the chipmaker during the Biden administration, the U.S. government gets an ownership stake in the company — just shy of 10%.

That deal, by the way, means the government got a discount of over 17% on that Intel stock.

The reaction came today: Intel — in a regulatory filing — outlined all of the ways this deal could go sideways. Foreign governments could slap on new restrictions. Intel might have trouble raising new capital in the future.

In short, the existence of a significant U.S. government equity interest in the company may substantially limit the company's ability to pursue potential future strategic transactions that may be beneficial to stockholders.

In some ways, taking an ownership stake in Intel makes sense.

“If the public is going to be putting up the money, the public deserves more of the upside to that investment, if and when it pans out,” said Todd Tucker at the Roosevelt Institute. 

Of course it might not pan out. 

Michael Strain with the American Enterprise Institute worries about how the deal might affect Intel’s future. 

“Intel will be making decisions in part based on what's going to make the White House and the President happy or unhappy,” said Strain.

For example, by potentially avoiding layoffs it might otherwise make to improve its profitability. 

“This is going to shape the decisions of Intel's customers, as well,” Strain said. “Do they renew contracts at favorable rates or unfavorable rates for fear of attracting unwanted attention from the government?”

In essence, the Intel deal and potentially others like it — something President Trump indicated he’d welcome — could mean a significant level of government involvement in private industry. 

China, of course, has been doing this for decades, to varying degrees of success. But the country has recently started to embrace more free-market principles. 

Kannan Ramaswamy at Arizona State University’s school of global management said Beijing has figured out what others in Europe, Asia and Latin America have learned. 

“The evidence is I mean, really, irrefutable from every country that we can think of, lots of evidence suggesting that governments are poor owners,” said Ramaswamy.

Of course, there was the financial crisis of 2008, when the U.S. government did take ownership stakes in General Motors and insurer AIG. 

“That was really an unusual situation, in the sense of companies that were deemed as very vital to the future American economy, but they were on the verge of bankruptcy,” said Darrell West at the Brookings Institution. 

The federal government sold its ownership stakes in those companies once the emergency was over. 

The difference now? There are no plans for an exit.