I appreciated this comment. I really dislike Trump, but I try to steelman the opposing side to not fall into the "other party bad!" nonsense. But his recent actions have made it very hard to find a steelman, and it's been hard to resist feeling "the dude is a power-hungry narcissist". Your explanation makes a lot of sense as a steelman; thank you!
If you look only at Trump helping Intel, then yeah, that steelman makes sense.
But if you look at the affects of Trumps policies, such as stagnated manufacturing jobs, and huge uncertainty around tariffs, and Trump's willingness to blow up trade negotiations with Canada because Canada changed their policies about the middle east; just overall, Trump's not doing things that help us beat China.
We also see things like the US tends to reward those working in finance more than people working in engineering or just doing regular work. Income tax is higher than capital gains tax in America, this is a political choice we have made that rewards those who move money and capital around, but we give less reward to those who work or build things. Meanwhile in China they go out of their way to punish those in finance with government enforced caps on financial industry wages and such; they're trying to make sure their society is set up to reward engineering, building things, and regular work more than it rewards moving money around.
