The U.S. now owns a big chunk of Intel. That’s a huge deal.

Last month, President Donald Trump announced an unusual deal. Intel, the biggest microchip maker in America, had agreed to give the United States a 10 percent stake in its business. That means the U.S. government is now Intel's largest shareholder — and a major American company is now a partially state-owned enterprise. 

This deal has raised a lot of eyebrows. The U.S. government almost never gets tangled up with businesses like this. Some have accused the president of taking a step toward, well, socialism.

But the Intel deal didn’t come out of nowhere. It's actually the l...