US President Donald Trump wants more deals like Intel’s, worrying business community

US President Donald J. Trump said he wants to make more investments in healthy US companies on Monday. Whether Corporate America is on board is another story.

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The White House announced a near-10% stake in chipmaker Intel on Friday that converts government grants into an equity share.

Mr. Trump doubled down on the idea of similar deals in other sectors on Monday, telling reporters at the White House, “I hope I'm going to have many more cases like it.”

The administration’s approach upends a decades-old view of the US economy, in which the government only took corporate stakes in rare emergencies like the 2008 global financial crisis and the subsequent bailout of US auto companies. Intel is struggling, but still has a cash cushion of $9 billion anda market value of $105 billion.

To critics, the Intel move — along with the White House’s pressure on the US Federal Reserve to lower interest rates, its use of emergency powers to slap tariffs on imported goods and involvement in various mergers — threatens the US business world’s nimbleness.

“We're moving from a pure capitalistic economy to a much more state-engaged economy... That’s a huge change for America and over where we've been. I've never seen an era like this,” said Bill George, former Medtronic chief executive officer (CEO) and executive education fellow at Harvard Business School.

Mr. Trump said ina social media post on Monday that he would help companies that make similar “lucrative” deals with US states, but did not provide details.