What a second Trump presidency means for major US tech firms

As the US election results pushed shares in artificial intelligence giant Nvidia to a record high and did the same to the price of the bitcoin cryptocurrency, the market decided what the Trump redux meant at least for the shares. of the world of technology: boom. .

The stock in the electric vehicle (EV) company Tesla increased by almost 15%, which must have pleased its CEO, Elon Musk, whom Trump called “a genius ” on Wednesday.

But what about the people who don’t own the Silicon Valley companies but use their products? Tens of millions of users of Musk’s social media platform, X, will now have to decide whether they are willing to put up with someone who looks set to become a central part of the Trump administration.

Musk could be tasked with “making recommendations for drastic changes” that target the operations and operations of “the entire federal government”, Trump said. This would give Musk greater leverage over the companies that control his and other technology companies.

X had become, according to independent technologist Benedict Evans, “a nexus for disinformation” and many felt that the promotion of false accusations had tainted the election. Can the Trump administration do anything about misinformation on social media?

“He won’t do that,” Evans said. “He likes misinformation. There is a widespread view in technology that the media budget has gotten out of hand and we need to get back on this. In particular you may need to consider amplification [of misinformation] but not to delete items. ” Therefore, expect a steep ride on social platforms, perhaps, as they move to the right.

The 47th president will have an important role to play in leading the most important years for the development of AI and dealing with the technological oligarchy of the big five firms – Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft and Amazon – that use the data and processing power that creates the community. and the economic lives of billionaires. Here, where issues of competition, freedom of expression and national security are at stake, Trump’s admiration for Musk’s masks is a more complex proposition.

As someone who has been insulting the elites, Trump can be expected to try to bring down the dominance of technology. It was under Trump’s first presidency that the Department of Justice began an investigation into Google that resulted in a lawsuit against the firm for suppressing competition.

During the election, Trump called Google CEO Sundar Pichai to complain that the company’s search engine wasn’t producing enough good content and threatened that the Justice Department would sue the firm for election interference. He also threatened to jail Mark Zuckerberg if Facebook did “anything illegal” in the campaign.

“At least with his nominees, he has a record of being tough on technology on competition issues,” said Professor Rebecca Haw Allensworth, associate dean of Vanderbilt University’s law school. Since then, we have seen him familiar with technology in general, and Elon Musk in particular. So that ends the other way. ”

Trump will likely take office with ongoing litigation challenging the market power of several large technology firms, led by the Federal Trade Commission’s anti-monopoly chairman, Lina Khan. Many expect him to be fired. However, Trump’s vice president, JD Vance, has expressed support for aspects of his one-man approach. He said during the campaign that he shares “his opinion that we should be concerned about the big technology companies and some of the communications that lead to the attention of the American people.”

Trump also thinks that tech giants are giving the US global power, at a time when AI is becoming a national security issue.

“China is afraid of Google,” Trump said last month when asked whether a Google business split would “destroy the company”.

“What you can do without ruining it is to make sure it’s right,” he said. “We want to have big companies,” he added. “We don’t want China to have these companies.”

Other issues: should he make it harder for China to build the super-powerful microchips needed for AI? Can AI code remain open source to encourage innovation among small companies or simply provide computing power to political opponents. Trump said he would “save TikTok” after its Chinese owners decided to sell it if it wanted to continue in the United States, but controversy is everywhere.

Elsewhere, any plan by Trump to cut incentives for EV manufacturers would be “generally bad for the EV industry”, said Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush, an LA-based financial services firm. Perhaps this would help Musk’s Tesla because its existing competitive advantage would be exaggerated if its rivals were to cheat. There are reports that Trump may just change the subsidies instead of scrapping them. If Trump’s trade tariffs reduce imports of cheap Chinese EVs, that could help Musk even more.

With a questionable past, Trump has now backed cryptocurrencies, and the industry is hoping, after making huge donations to Trump’s campaign, that the law will be relaxed. Crypto-related stocks in Coinbase, MicroStrategy, Riot Platforms, MARA Holdings jumped between 11% and 21%.