A sign at a protest rally in Redwood City, Calif., in the heart of Silicon Valley, on Saturday stood out: “Hey Zuck and Tim, how’s sucking up to Trump working for you now?”
The taunting message for Meta Platforms Inc. CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook was obvious, yet dripping in irony.
Despite a brief smooth run between President Donald Trump and Big Tech, things have soured financially. Since the inauguration — where Trump was flanked onstage by Zuckerberg, Cook, Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk, Alphabet Inc. CEO Sundar Pichai and Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos — the combined market value of Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta and Microsoft Corp. has tumbled 22% to $10 trillion.
The sweeping tariffs, which start April 9 and have the effect of a crushing import tax on China and Taiwan, are likely to disrupt trade flows essential to tech companies’ business models. Collateral damage to tech and the greater economy, which have prompted increased fears of a recession, has torpedoed the stocks, not to mention, personal wealth, of tech chieftains.
During a record sell-off Friday, Zuckerberg lost $17.9 billion in paper wealth, while Bezos’s fortune declined $16 billion, and Musk, $8.7 billion, according to a Forbes analysis. [Through April 7, the Guardian estimated Musk had lost $130 billion; Bezos, $45 billion; and Zuckerberg, $28 billion.] Apple’s market value tanked $640 billion, pushing it behind Microsoft as the world’s most valuable company, and Tesla shares plummeted yet again. On Thursday, the market massacre swept away $208 billion from the world’s richest 500 people, said the Bloomberg Billionaire’s Index, the fourth largest one-day decline in the tracker’s 13-year history.
Should markets continue to tank, ushering in a recession within the next several months, the pain will extend beyond the bottom lines of Big Tech and the personal wealth of its leaders. It could have a major impact on artificial intelligence (AI) projects in the U.S., such as construction of data centers necessary to provide the huge amounts of electricity needed for AI, as well as nuclear power agreements to secure long-term energy supplies, according to economists and tech experts.
This could compromise projects like Stargate, a $500 billion, four-year initiative for U.S. AI investments from OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle Corp. endorsed by Donald Trump, as well as commitments from Apple ($500 billion over four years) and others to invest in AI projects and infrastructure in the U.S..
“As someone that has covered tech stocks for 25 years, I have seen everything from the Dot.com bubble/burst, financial crisis, Europe debt crisis, Covid days, and everything in between,” Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives said in a note to investors Tuesday. “The reason I believe this is the biggest debacle ever seen in the markets is because its (sic) purely self-inflicted by Trump and the logic about ‘near-term pain’ is being way miscalculated, which speaks to our concern. Its (sic) very easy to say ‘build in America’ behind a microphone in the Beltway…the reality is so much different its almost a scary concept.”
A frustrated Musk, pulled no punches in calling Peter Navarro, the president’s top trade adviser, a “moron” and “dumber than a sack of bricks” in a tweet Tuesday.
While tariffs remain the crisis of the moment, the Trump Administration’s stance on antitrust regulation presents a longer-term threat. It is proceeding with several President Joe Biden-era antitrust lawsuits, policies and positions, signaling a continued focus on aggressive enforcement. In February, the Federal Trade Commission said it would continue to use the merger guidelines established in 2023 under Biden.
Indeed, the Justice Department in January sued to block a proposed $14 billion merger between Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. and Juniper Networks Inc. shortly after Trump took office. At the same time, the DoJ has largely maintained the Biden administration’s proposal that would require Alphabet’s Google to divest from its Chrome browser after a victory in federal court.
“Overall, what we’re seeing is largely continuity between the Biden and Trump antitrust regimes,” Nidhi Hegde, executive director at the American Economic Liberties Project, told The Hill.
The disconnect between Trump and tech comes after the industry wooed him the past few months. In addition to Musk’s largesse, Amazon and Meta each contributed $1 million to the inauguration, and Cook wrote a personal check for $1 million. Meta donated $25 million to Trump’s future presidential library to resolve a lawsuit he filed against the social media giant.
“I am very optimistic that President Trump is serious about this regulatory agenda,” Bezos said in December, following his election. “If I can help him do that, I’m going to help him, because we do have too much regulation in this country.”
Zuckerberg, who has lobbied the president and his top advisers to quash an FTC antitrust trial scheduled to start next week, has also overseen the rollback of diversity and content-moderation policies at Meta, and he appointed Trump ally and UFC president Dana White to the company’s board.
The star-crossed bromance between the president and Big Tech leaders was recently summarized in an Axios dispatch: “Trump and tech share a move fast, break things, high-testosterone mentality. But most tech CEOs are fixated on two things: future growth and AI. Trump spends little time fixating on tech, advisers tell us.”
