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By Theo Burman
Live News Reporter
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Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick has said that his department has been in contact with top universities to create "deals" that would give the government patents for their research and inventions.
Lutnick told President Donald Trump, along with the Cabinet and the press, that the government would be receiving the patents in return for the "tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars" spent in grants each year.
Newsweek has contacted the White House for more information via email.
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Why It Matters
The statement came shortly after Trump announced a deal with Intel that would give the federal government a 10 percent stake in the computer chip-producing company. It marks another government intervention into private business practices, which is a shift from typical conservative economic orthodoxy, and could frustrate some of the government's free-market proponents in the Republican Party.
What To Know
In the briefing on Tuesday, Lutnick informed the president and his colleagues in Cabinet that he was already in contact with Harvard over the implementation of the deals.
"We have given tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars to universities for them to do research, and they invent things, and you know who owns those patents? The universities," he said, causing Trump to nod his head and smile.
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"So we are going to make a deal with them all, which is: if we give them the money, don't you think it's fair that the United States of America, and the taxpayers who funded it, get a piece of that?"
The briefing followed a Tuesday interview on CNBC, in which Lutnick defended the Trump administration's approach to ownership.
When asked by host Andrew Ross Sorkin about Boeing and Palantir, the secretary said that companies like these made large profits from the government already, so it made sense that the government should own a slice of them.
"I mean, Lockheed Martin makes 97 percent of their revenue from the U.S. government. They are basically an arm of the U.S. government," Lutnick said.
"There's a lot of talking that needs to be had about how do we finance our munitions, acquisitions?…Now you have the right people in the jobs and Donald Trump at the head thinking about what is the right way to do it. I'll tell you the way it has been done has been a giveaway."
What People Are Saying
White House spokesperson Kush Desai previously told Newsweek in reference to the Intel deal: "The previous administration pushed legislation to dole out billions in grants that prioritized DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] over taxpayer return to some of the largest semiconductor companies in the world.
"Now the Trump administration is ensuring that taxpayers are able to reap the upside of the federal government's investments into safeguarding our national and economic security—all while simultaneously pushing supply-side reforms like deregulation and The One Big Beautiful Bill's tax cuts to let the free market restore America as the world's most dynamic economy."
What Happens Next
No further announcement about any deals have been released by universities in contact with the White House.
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