"About a month after the inauguration for your second term, I asked you, Mr President, what do you want the economy to look like in four years? And you were very clear. You said, I want the private sector to rule the day. And since then, in the last year, you've taken a 10% stake in Intel. You've taken the stake in MP Mountain Pass. You told the defense companies two weeks ago, don't pay any dividends, don't do buybacks until you produce the weapons that we need."
"It's a very free market. We have defense companies that were making a fortune, they were buying back stock with all their money. And then they come to us for money if they want to, you know, we want to buy something or we want our plants built, and they'd say, could you loan us some money? And they'd be doing tens of billions of dollars of stock buyback, so I'm not letting them do it. I want them to put money into it."
At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Maria Bartiromo questioned President Donald Trump about the federal government taking a 10 percent stake in Intel and investments in MP Mountain Pass; Intel reported the investment totaled $8.9 billion. Bartiromo contrasted those moves with Trump's stated goal of letting the private sector 'rule the day' and asked how such stakes align with free-market capitalism. Trump defended the actions as free-market responses to defense contractors' stock buybacks and high executive pay, saying he will block dividends and buybacks to force reinvestment. He emphasized the need for faster weapons production, citing tomahawks available within 24 hours rather than multi-year lead times.
Read at www.mediaite.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]