The Trump administration’s extraordinary intervention against the $117 billion takeover of Qualcomm Inc. surfaced suddenly last week. But it was months in the making.
In December, Qualcomm’s leaders, reeling from a year of battles with customers and regulators in the U.S. and abroad, faced the prospect of losing the company to a hostile takeover by Broadcom Ltd. in what would be tech’s biggest-ever takeover.
One...