Catenaa, Wednesday, June 17, 2026- The Trump administration wants 400 dealmakers to help the US bolster its national security supply chains by offering $400,000 a year for Wall Street recruits.
Under a new hiring initiative, the White House is targeting top dealmaking talent by dangling those potential salaries, which match the president’s pay, with the promise that candidates won’t have to shed their private-sector stock options.
The goal is to enlist the workers in helping the federal government develop financial agreements meant to cultivate critical supply chains and domestic industries critical for national security, Bloomberg News reported.
The effort seeks to address what one of the officials described as a major bottleneck, human capital, in government processing of a long queue of hundreds of potential projects worthy of evaluation.
Highly skilled professionals can help the US move more quickly to deploy and invest taxpayer dollars wisely on projects that would help reindustrialize the country, the report said.
“For too long, the federal government has tried to shore up critical supply chain deficiencies in industries such as semiconductors, shipyards, and critical minerals without enough people with dealmaking experience in these strategic industries,” US Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor said this month. “Under President Trump, that is changing.”
Kupor himself has deep roots as an investor, previously serving as managing partner at prominent venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
The OPM initiative is aimed at finance professionals who specialize in structuring, negotiating, and finalizing top-dollar business transactions, but who may be loath to abandon stock options and other private-sector perks for relatively short-term stints in the federal government.
Federal pay scales top out at $197,200 annually for the civil service and $228,000 for senior executives. But new employees hired under the program would start at $253,100, what a cabinet secretary makes, and could draw the same salary as the president himself: $400,000.
Eligible recruits also wouldn’t have to forfeit long-term benefits, in a shift that addresses a major barrier for anyone contemplating leaving the private sector for Washington.
Instead, they’d be able to keep long-term compensation from their private-sector jobs, such as stock grants, options, and carried interest.
A legal opinion from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel in March concluded that those incentives don’t violate ethics laws forbidding federal employees from having their taxpayer-paid salaries subsidized by outside companies.
The initiative comes as President Donald Trump pursues deals meant to strengthen US supply chains and the country’s industrial base, including a critical mineral stockpile as well as equity investments in chipmaker Intel Corp. and critical mineral suppliers.
Those novel financial transactions have also exposed the need for more professionals within the federal government who can conduct due diligence in sectors such as critical minerals and help get deals across the finish line, the report said.
The program is focused on federal agencies and institutions that are at the center of Trump’s reindustrialization efforts, including the US International Development Finance and the Export-Import Bank.
Deal professionals could also be deployed at the Energy Department, the Commerce Department’s chips office, and the Defense Department’s Office of Strategic Capital.
