- calendar_today August 31, 2025
Republican former President Donald Trump called on Intel’s new CEO Lip-Bu Tan to resign from his post Thursday, alleging that the veteran semiconductor executive is “highly conflicted.”
“THE CEO OF INTEL IS HIGHLY CONFLICTED and must resign immediately. There is no other solution to this problem,” Trump tweeted on his Truth Social network.
Intel did not respond to a request for comment on Trump’s allegation, which was posted after markets closed Thursday in the U.S. and Friday morning in Asia. The White House also declined to comment on Trump’s tweet. However, Intel’s stock traded in pre-market trading in New York on Thursday morning, declined by 3 percent following Trump’s post.
Tan is a Silicon Valley veteran with decades of experience at the intersection of semiconductors and venture capital. Based in San Francisco, Tan’s private investment firm, U.S. and Hong Kong, has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into China’s technology sector over the past three decades, including Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC), China’s largest chipmaker.
Tan’s past business dealings and network of investments have attracted increased scrutiny, especially following his announcement last week that he would take the helm at Intel, the world’s largest chipmaker. The Michigan-based company is the only remaining advanced semiconductor manufacturer with a U.S. headquarters.
One of Tan’s past companies, Cadence Design Systems, which Tan led until this year and which remains a publicly traded U.S. chip design software firm, was also the subject of recent controversy.
Cadence in July announced that it had violated U.S. export controls by selling its chip design software to Fudan University in Shanghai. Fudan, a research university with links to the Chinese military, was one of two universities to which Cadence had sold its products in China without obtaining a license from the U.S. government.
Senator Tom Cotton, in a letter to Intel’s board chair Frank Yeary earlier this month, said that Tan’s extensive business dealings in China, especially his long history as a major investor in Chinese technology companies, were cause for “concern about the security and integrity of Intel’s operations.”
Intel has been a major focus for both sides in Washington’s efforts to promote domestic semiconductor manufacturing and reduce U.S. reliance on Asian chipmakers, especially Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and South Korea’s Samsung.
The California-based chip giant is lagging far behind TSMC in advanced chip manufacturing, a gap that Intel has struggled to close since it was revealed last year. Even so, Intel has received billions in subsidies and loans from the U.S. government as part of Washington’s industrial policy push.
This effort is part of the Biden administration’s plans to compete with China in the emerging semiconductor industry by spending more than $50 billion in subsidies to domestic companies. The funding is part of a wider U.S. push to de-risk from Taiwanese and South Korean semiconductor firms, whose advanced chips are at the heart of the U.S. economy and are increasingly important in the technology arms race between the U.S. and China.
Tan’s warning in July that Intel would likely have to abandon its plans to advance to a next-generation manufacturing technology if the company did not find a major new customer underscored the gap with TSMC.
Intel’s inability to catch up with TSMC in cutting-edge chip production has coincided with an explosion of demand for leading-edge chips, as artificial intelligence technologies become the next battleground in the technology race between the U.S. and China. Intel is hardly a player in the emerging AI chip market.
A sudden abandonment of Intel’s leading-edge manufacturing effort, now led by Tan, would give TSMC near-complete dominance of a segment that could have significant national security implications for the U.S. That urgency is one of several factors driving the U.S. government’s interest in reshoring and reinvigorating U.S. semiconductor manufacturing.
The controversy over Tan’s past investments in Chinese tech companies, combined with the export control violation by one of his former companies in the U.S., has set the stage for a rocky transition at Intel.
Tan, who took over as Intel’s CEO in March after Intel’s board replaced outgoing CEO Pat Gelsinger in December, faces the daunting task of taking on a 20-year manufacturing development road map while navigating a politically charged environment in the U.S. Congress.
That environment has seen Republican lawmakers and the Trump White House increase pressure on Intel and other domestic chip firms in recent months over the U.S. economy’s dependence on Asian companies. That focus is especially strong in the leading-edge market, where TSMC has all but eclipsed U.S. efforts.
