This past week began with Donald Trump and his team making clear that they have plans to have the government take a 10% stake in Intel (INTC), the first of "many more cases."
Officials then offered hints in the days that followed as to what sectors might be next.
Comments from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, among others, have seen trial balloons launched in areas from shipbuilding to defense contractors to the final form of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
And an outside observer -- Darrell West of the Center for Technology Innovation at the Brookings Institution -- offered a fourth possibility in a recent interview, suggesting that AI data centers could be an even more high-profile area that might be ripe for Trump's emerging brand of government interventionism.
"Data centers are at risk because they need a tremendous amount of energy and they have to go through a permitting process that gives the government great leverage over them," West said. "These companies are going to need government assistance to really operationalize these plans."
Of course, how far Trump eventually tries to go remains to be seen. The president and his team have offered unbridled enthusiasm, promising deals "all day long." Notably less enthusiasm has come from many in the business world and many Republicans.
The moves have even led to cries of socialism from some free-market conservatives who are allied with Trump in other areas but have grown increasingly vocal about the president's broader willingness to interfere in corporate decision making.
Multiple other points of leverage
But a bottom line appears to be that -- if Trump wants to go further -- he could have plenty of roads to choose from.
"The types of sectors ripe for equity investments are those that are ripe for industrial policy more broadly: products or activities that the rest of the economy relies on," said Todd Tucker, the director of industrial policy and trade at the Roosevelt Institute.
Tucker acknowledged widespread worries that government investment will lead to distortion in markets. But he argues it is essentially a matter of degree, and years of increasing government involvement in the private sector means "the distortion on some level is already happening."
Another key element -- which even Trump has acknowledged -- is the need for the government to have leverage.
This was clearly the case with Intel. The chipmaker came to the table as a struggling company already reliant on government largesse in a sector key to national security.