The largest technological companies and their managers donated millions to the inauguration of President Trump, hosted parties and dinners in black tie in his honor and allowed him to announce and take merit for new multimiliard production projects.
But less than three months after the president’s second term, Trump has just returned their sumptuous gestures with favors.
The large rates that imposed last week will squeeze the Apple iPhone supply chain and will make it much more expensive for Amazon, Meta, Google and Microsoft to build supercomputer to feed artificial intelligence. The president cut federal funding for research on emerging technologies such as Ai and Quantum Computing. His immigration terminal has encouraged the fears that will interrupt the pipelines for technological talents.
The Trump administration has also reported that an aggressive regulatory position on the reining in the power of the largest technological companies will continue, starting next week with a historical antitrust process to break Meta, the Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp owner.
From the inauguration, the combined market value of Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta and Microsoft have dropped by 22 % to $ 10 trillion. And the heavy Nasdaq index of technology dropped by 21 percent.
The efforts to woo Mr. Trump are very far from the sector’s approach to his first administration, when many technological leaders were openly hostile against the president. With a face and attitude, the managers hoped this time that Mr. Trump could show greater deference, included in his efforts to deregple industries such as energy and cars.
Instead, the genuflection of the best leaders of Silicon Valley could be an incorrect reading of how to be successful in the Washington of Mr. Trump, according to democratic and republican policy experts.
The relationship that the technological managers have with the president was a “one -way road”, said Gigi Sohn, a former senior councilor of the Federal Communications Commission pursuant to the Biden administration. “They give him everything and does not promise anything, which in this case is a good thing.”
This did not prevent them from trying. Last week, the CEO of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, was at the White House to try to convince the administration to resolve the antitrust cause of the Federal Commerce Commission against Meta. The technological leaders including Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, have also visited the White House in recent weeks.
The companies said they wanted to interact with Mr. Trump on a variety of issues and that they are examining the long -range effects of his policies. Apple, Google, Meta and Amazon have refused to comment.
The White House did not respond to a commentary request.
The hostilities between the technological industry and Mr. Trump date back to at least 2016, when multiple technological managers supported Hillary Clinton for the president and donated to his campaign. After Mr. Trump was elected, technological leaders criticized the ban on the immigration of the president for Muslims and his skepticism on Covid-19 vaccines.
Trump’s first administration took a tough regulatory position on the sector, intended legal actions against Google and Meta. He blocked himself against social media and other internet giants for having censored him and accumulated too much power. He also blamed the platforms for contributing to his electoral loss in 2020.
The public tone of the technological industry against Trump moved abruptly last year after being injured in an attempted assassination.
Subsequently, Mr. Zuckerberg called him a “tough”. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, praised Mr. Trump for “Grace Under Fire”. Elon Musk, who guides the Spacex missile company, the Tesla electric car manufacturer and the Social Media X platform, approved Mr. Trump and continued to mount and donate $ 300 million to his campaign.
After the elections, the CEO of Apple, Tim Cook, together with Meta, Google and Amazon, donated $ 1 million each at the inauguration. Many leaders have been traveling to Mar-A-Lago, a resort of Mr. Trump in Palm Beach, Florida, and at the inauguration, Mr. Musk, Mr. Bezos, Mr. Zuckerberg, Mr. Cook and Mr. Pichai all appeared on the march next to the cabinet members.
“If you look at the inauguration, look at the people who were on that phase – Here is a WHO WHO in a world that was totally against me the first time,” said Trump recently in an interview with Outkick’s Clay Travis, a sports site and news owned by Fox.
There have been some advantages. Mr. Musk is now a close councilor of the president and critics say that his activities will probably collect the prizes from his closeness. Trump also signed the executive orders by delaying a sale or a ban on Tiktok, as imposed by a law approved last year for concern for safety on the Chinese parent company of the app, bytedance.
Despite cutting his federal funding, Trump opened the doors to a continuous regulatory touch on the AI, which declared his maximum priority to beat China in a race for global technological leadership. Last month, Google, Microsoft, Meta and other technological giants presented suggestions, asking that the administration remained out of hand.
And the US regulators have almost completely dismantled a repression of the government of years on the cryptocurrency industry, a volatile sector full of fraud, scams and thefts. This benefits the companies including the company of Venture Capital Andreessen Horowitz, an important investor in space.
But technological companies still face intensifying pressures within the current Trump administration.
The new leaders appointed to the Department of Justice and the FTC have not shown signs to get back on a series of antitrust suits presented against Google, Meta, Amazon and Apple.
Trump chose Gail Slater, a veteran lawyer and a vocal technological critic, to guide the antitrust division at the Department of Justice. Trump underlined the importance of his role in repressing the powerful Silicon Valley giants during his announcement.
“Big Tech has unleashed for years, suffocating competition in our most innovative sector and, as we all know, using its market power to repress the rights of so many Americans, as well as those of Little Tech!” Trump said in a post on Truth Social, his social media platform.
The president also appointed Andrew Ferguson, who expressed concern about the power of social media companies, as president of the FTC next week, Ferguson will lead the antitrust process against Meta, in which the government will accuse Facebook of buying Instagram and WhatsApp almost a decade ago to cease its monopoly in the social network.
It is not clear whether the efforts of Mr. Zuckerberg to secure an agreement will be successful. But in the end, any decision on the president will be taken by the president, said Ferguson last week in a conference held by the incubator of the technological start-up Y Combinator in Washington.
“The head of the president’s executive branch, and I think it is important for me to obey the orders tied,” he said when he was asked if he would drop a cause like the Meta Case if instructed by Mr. Trump.
“I think the president recognizes that we must enforce the laws, so I would be very surprised if something like that had ever happened,” he added.
Perhaps the biggest blow for the technological industry arrived in the form of rates last week. Apple, one of the most affected companies, produces 90 percent of the iPhones that sells all over the world in China, where the rates, which were already 20 percent, will increase 34 percent this week.
“These rates will increase consumer prices and force our commercial partners to take revenge,” said Gary Shapiro, managing director of technology consumption, a commercial group. “The Americans will become poorer because of these rates.”