On Wednesday, the chief executives of the leading Big Tech companies congratulated the US president-elect. Sundar Pichai (Alphabet), Mark Zuckerberg (Meta), Tim Cook (Apple), Andy Jassy (Amazon), and Satya Nadella (Microsoft) have all sparred with Donald Trump before, but they were quick to get behind him as their companies face a fresh four years of operating under an influential politician who has proved volatile.
Trump has shown disdain for Big Tech companies, and he’s been vocal about pursuing policies that increase the cost of doing business for Big Tech and subject them to more unfavorable regulations. Ahead of the election, business leaders and venture capitalists expressed concern that an unpredictable administration would undermine the stability of their businesses.
At the same time, Trump has vowed to back out of policies that might have hobbled growth for certain tech companies. The president-elect may also take a more hands-off approach when it comes to some tech mergers and acquisitions, analysts say.
And now, with Elon Musk as his biggest supporter, “this might be a moment in which there’s a picking of favorites amongst the Big Tech players,” says Betsy Cooper, director of the Aspen Policy Academy.
While Trump’s tech policy positions have varied widely—and shifted often—his actions during his last presidency and his comments on the campaign trail shed light on what Big Tech might expect during a second term.
Tariffs and Trade
One of the most closely-watched Trump proposals among the tech crowd has been his proposed import tariff, which could have a massive impact on both tech companies and consumer spending. Last year, Trump floated the idea of a 10 percent universal tariff and later proposed an additional 60 percent tariff on imports from China and up to 100 percent tariff on goods from Mexico.
This has raised questions about Apple’s business—since more than 95 percent of its hardware products are manufactured and assembled in China—as well as large retailers and ecommerce companies that rely heavily on Chinese materials and components. On Monday the National Retail Federation said US shoppers could lose up to $78 billion in annual spending power if the proposed tariffs were implemented and US companies raised prices to offset their losses.
Apple might be less vulnerable than an initial reading of these tariffs might suggest, equity research firm Bernstein said in a bullish note released Wednesday, because of the company’s ability to absorb higher tariffs. Apple has also been diversifying its supply chain by producing products in different regions, like Vietnam.
Cooper, from the Aspen Policy Academy, notes that manufacturers already experienced disrupted supply chains during the pandemic and had to figure out how to shore up their processes. That experience could prove helpful in a high-tariff situation.
Ian Bremmer, founder of political risk research firm Eurasia Group, believes that Trump’s bark might be worse than his bite: He predicts that Trump will come in high on his tariff proposals and lower the tariff rate after rounds of negotiations. This is partly because a substantial jump in the tariffs rate on China will only drive hardware manufacturers to shift their supply chains to third countries, he says, as they did during the earlier Trump administration.
And, almost universally, analysts and economists say that retaliatory tariffs could hurt US businesses even more.
Consistent with this theme, Trump has blasted a Biden-era bipartisan law that aimed to reduce the US’s reliance on Asia for chips and authorized more than $50 billion in spending to boost domestic supply of semiconductors.
In a nearly three-hour episode of The Joe Rogan Experience in late October, Trump said the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act was “bad” because it funneled money to already-rich companies. He said the US should have imposed tariffs on foreign suppliers instead, which would, in turn, compel them to spend their own money to build chip plants in the US. He specifically criticized Taiwan, home of TSMC, a key partner for US chipmaker Nvidia, and said, “They stole our business.” (As The New York Times points out, the US is incredibly reliant on Taiwan for all sorts of chips; only about 10 percent of the world’s semiconductors are produced in the United States.)
“There are countervailing pressures, with Trump being pro-US manufacturing and against the CHIPS act, and it’s still unclear which way this plays,” Cooper said.
AI
When it comes to artificial intelligence, the priority for a second Trump administration will be ensuring that the US leads the race to develop more powerful and capable AI algorithms—especially compared to its main geopolitical rival, China.
The previous Trump administration sought to eliminate regulations thought to inhibit commercial tech innovation. In the era of large language models and hyperscale AI training runs, Trump might also consider providing federal resources to power the massive-scale AI projects needed to help keep American AI ahead.
The strategy is also likely to involve hobbling America’s big rival. The previous Trump government introduced sanctions designed to limit Chinese AI companies’ ability to do business with the US and access the chips required for building cutting-edge AI—controls that were tightened under Biden. Trump’s second term could see efforts to restrain Chinese AI ramp-up, especially if a broader trade war kicks off.
One of the clearest statements Trump has made about the future of AI is a promise to repeal a Biden administration executive order issued around the technology.
The Biden Executive Order on Artificial Intelligence was introduced last year to place guardrails around a technology that seemed to be accelerating at a dangerous speed. Biden’s executive order implemented measures designed to limit potentially risky uses of AI, guard against bias in algorithms, and increase federal scrutiny of the most powerful models.
But Trump has vowed to repeal that order, saying at a rally in Iowa last December that on “day one” he would cancel the order and “ban the use of AI to censor the speech of American citizens.”
Many of the requirements of the executive order have, in actuality, been fulfilled, so repealing the order itself would have little effect. The Trump administration could, however, dismantle some of its work, which experts warn might have dangerous consequences as the technology becomes widely used.
States may try to fill the void. The Center for AI Policy, a safety-focused research group that discloses little about its funding, issued a memo on Wednesday stating it expects “state-level and global action on AI regulation to accelerate in the new year in response to reduced federal oversight” and that “ironically, a prolonged absence of federal regulation may increase the total compliance burden on global AI companies.”
Elon Musk’s AI rivals may also have reason to be concerned. The billionaire Trump-booster has been a frequent critic of OpenAI, which he cofounded before leaving, and of Google, accusing both companies of developing overly “woke,” politically correct AI algorithms. Musk’s desire to lead the AI race with his own company, xAI, combined with the enormous influence he might wield within the Trump administration, could make both OpenAI and Google targets, perhaps threatening their ability to secure lucrative future government contracts.
Social Platforms and Child Safety
A US law known as Section 230 currently prevents holding internet platforms liable for what users post and share. It has spared services such as YouTube, Facebook, and Snapchat from having to pay potentially billions of dollars in legal judgments to content creators, viewers, and parents of users who have alleged harm as a result of what they view as poor design and content moderation choices by the tech giants.
Just before leaving office in his first term as president, Trump threatened to veto a significant defense spending bill unless lawmakers repealed the liability shield for tech companies. In a tweet at the time, Trump called Section 230 a “threat to our National Security & Election Integrity” and added that “Our Country can never be safe & secure if we allow it to stand.”
And he didn’t bluff. He vetoed the defense bill, writing, in part, “The Act fails even to make any meaningful changes to Section 230.” But the House and Senate by wide margins overrode his veto to push through the popular bipartisan package. If Republicans have full control of Congress in Trump’s upcoming term, they could outvote Democrats to give Trump the repeal he’s wanted and open the floodgates to lawsuits.
Child safety on tech platforms might also be a political topic, says Camille Carlton, senior policy manager at the Center for Humane Technology. Meta and other tech companies (including Match Group, the dating app giant) have been lobbying for the responsibility to fall on Apple and Google, who run the world’s largest app stores, to handle age verification and online safety measures.
“Democrat-led states have generally emphasized platforms taking responsibility and changing the way the platforms work,” she says. “But in Republican-leading areas, we’ve seen more emphasis on parental control. So when it comes to online safety I think we’ll now see a different approach than we’ve seen so far.”
Carlton notes, though, that this has mostly been a bipartisan issue and that there’s a “broad consensus that people want these platforms to design these products from the beginning in such a way that protects kids.”
TikTok
For TikTok, Trump represents a glimmer of hope of not getting banned in the US. While Congress has already shown its determination to ban TikTok and the courts are not expected to block it, Trump has been the rare political force that explicitly intended not to ban TikTok. On Wednesday morning, Charlie Kirk, a conservative mega-influencer, suggested to his followers in a livestream that Trump getting elected means TikTok won’t be banned.
The reality is less certain than that. The bill to force TikTok to either be sold or banned in the US has received bipartisan support in Congress and has already been signed into law. To undo that would mean Trump would have to convince hundreds of Republican members of Congress to take a complete 180. That’s going to be very difficult, but not unimaginable in the current political landscape where Republicans coalesce around Trump.
Also to bear in mind, the law laid out another possibility for TikTok: to sell its US operations to an American company and accept that it can only exist elsewhere. For Republicans, this is a win-win scenario in which Trump keeps his promise and Congress keeps its bill. In that case, the only loser—who will be most vehemently against it—will be ByteDance.
Crypto
On the campaign trail in 2024, Donald Trump styled himself as the “crypto president,” making a host of pledges designed to appeal to the crypto faithful.
Trump had previously rejected bitcoin as a “scam.” But in July, at a conference in Nashville, Tennessee, he sang from the crypto hymn sheet. Among other pledges, Trump promised to cement the US as the foremost bitcoin mining powerhouse, establish a national bitcoin stockpile, and appoint a bitcoin advisory council if reelected.
The most raucous cheers of the night were prompted by Trump’s promise to fire Gary Gensler, chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, a regulatory agency that has brought a volley of lawsuits against crypto businesses under the Biden administration.
Separately, Trump has promised to commute the sentence of Ross Ulbricht, the creator of darknet marketplace Silk Road, who is currently serving life in prison. Silk Road, through which people bought and sold drugs and other contraband, was among the first online services to accept bitcoin as payment. The severity of Ulbricht’s sentence is widely considered to be disproportionate by bitcoiners, who have long called for his release.
Antitrust
An early indicator of the relationship the Trump administration intends to have with Big Tech will be the fate of the Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan.
Khan, the youngest ever FTC chair at 35, became a flashpoint in the election campaign. Among Democrat donors, her approach to antitrust enforcement and corporate power was deeply controversial. Google, Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft all faced legal challenges under her tenure, although some were more successful than others.
“Lina Khan is … a person who is not helping America,” LinkedIn cofounder and Democrat donor Hoffman told CNN in July. Trump donor Elon Musk also expressed his dislike. “She will be fired soon,” he said of Khan last week.
Dan Ives, an analyst at financial services firm Wedbush, described Khan as a “nightmare for the tech sector,” adding there was a belief among analysts that her departure would act as a catalyst for more Big Tech deals. “The Musk influence for Trump could also catalyze and accelerate a potential Khan exit,” he said.
Trump has suggested, vaguely, that “something” should be done about Google, to make the company “more fair.” Vance has been more explicit, praising Khan for “doing a pretty good job.”
Vance appears to see break-ups as a solution for what he claims is Big Tech’s censorship of conservatives. “When you have companies like Facebook and Google censoring American citizens, making it harder for Americans to speak in their own political process, that is a major problem,” the vice president-elect said in September, giving Google’s acquisition of YouTube in 2006 as an example. “I do think that there should be an antitrust solution to it.”
A new Trump administration is unlikely to abandon antitrust cases against Big Tech, said Adam Kovacevich, CEO of Chamber of Progress, a left-leaning technology trade group, in a memo on Wednesday, noting several of these began under his first term. “But he will likely try to use these suits as leverage over the companies to get favorable treatment on speech and content concerns.”
Whether Khan would serve under Trump is unclear. Her team declined to comment on Wednesday. Bill Kovacic, a former FTC chair, said the chances of that happening beyond a few weeks were “close to zero.”
Joel Khalili, Morgan Meaker, and Zeyi Yang contributed reporting.
