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By The Editorial Board
The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.
More than 15 years ago, President Barack Obama decided that America’s automakers were too important to die, and he used government money to save them. There is a plausible argument that Intel, the semiconductor company, falls into the same category. It is one of the few makers of computer chips in the United States. Other companies, like Nvidia, design chips but rely primarily on Taiwanese factories to make them, which presents serious economic and national security vulnerabilities in the event of a war there. Government help for Intel — and President Trump recently had the government take a stake in it — could help the company make a comeback, much as the Obama bailout did for the domestic auto industry.
Unfortunately, Mr. Trump’s approach will probably do nothing to help the company. It is one more way in which he is intervening in the American economy on a whim, as if it were an extension of his family business, to the detriment of us all.
