CNBC Daily Open: Under Trump, business and politics are becoming bedfellows

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Taken from CNBC’s Daily Open, our international markets newsletter — Subscribe today

Don’t mix business with pleasure — or the music of the spheres might eject you from the skies even if you are an astronomer — but it seems, in the current milieu, there are no such restrictions between business and politics.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration is eyeing a stake in struggling chipmaker Intel, according to a Bloomberg report on Thursday. That consideration is primarily attributable to Intel’s status as the only born-and-bred American company that can manufacture the fastest chips on U.S. soil.

While some firms such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and Samsung, both of which can produce 3-nanometer chips — the most advanced semiconductors so far — have factories in the U.S., they are Taiwanese and South Korean companies, respectively, and probably do not enjoy apple pies on the Fourth of July.