In This Article:
Several notable Big Tech executives publicly congratulated President-Elect Donald Trump on his 2024 victory over Vice President Kamala Harris via social media. But as Trump's journey back to the White House begins again, what does a second Trump presidency mean for the tech sector?
Yahoo Finance tech editor Dan Howley lays out the biggest issues looming over Big Tech, namely antitrust concerns and the industry's business relationship with China.
To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Market Domination here.
This post was written by Luke Carberry Mogan.
Lots of stake now for Big Tech. Now that former President Trump has won the 2024 presidential election, Tech CEOs are already taking steps to make sure they're on solid footing with them. Let's get to Yahoo Finance's Dan Howley for more. Uh a lot of tweets today, Dan, a lot of tweets.
Yeah, a lot of a lot of back patting. Uh, some uh, I guess you could call them late endorsements from some uh, of the big tech folks. Uh, there's there's a few things that we want to go over here. It's it's really kind of a uh uh a set of four, uh when it comes to Trump and Big Tech. We'll we'll go over it really quickly. Antitrust, China and tariffs, Chips Act and AI. So let's just start off with the antitrust. Uh, Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post. There's that big kerfuffle, uh over him, uh kind of uh pushing aside the editorial board's endorsement of Kamala Harris. Uh, there's been a issues going on there now with the editorial and and the ownership. Uh, then Jeff Bezos comes out and he says, congratulations, yada yada yada to Trump, followed by uh, Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, Sachin Adela, Sundar Pichai, basically, I mean, all of Big Tech. Uh, you expect all of that. Uh, obviously. I think one of the things that is worth pointing out this time around, uh, is that there was much less uh, political activity coming from the likes of Zuckerberg, uh, more from folks like Musk. Uh, and that kind of points to them trying to clearly get on Trump's good side. Uh, the issue there is, uh, you have Lena Khan, uh the FTC, as well as obviously the DOJ doing antitrust investigations. Maybe if you get on Trump's good side, maybe the results of those investigations, uh, and potential uh, remediative steps aren't as onerous to tech companies. Uh, maybe Lena Khan is no longer at the FTC. That's probably most likely. Obviously, the DOJ, uh uh is going to see some changes. So that there's some, you know, thinking there, uh, as far as those go. Uh, as far as uh, the uh, tariffs in China, this is going to be a big deal for all of Big Tech. Uh, if we start to see more tariffs on goods coming from China, tech companies use goods from China for everything. It's just part of their DNA at this point. There's also the idea of tit for tat where China could start putting tariffs on US goods, or if it could hit specific US companies, specifically the likes of Apple, which depends heavily on China. Uh, Chips Act, we have to see if that's going to survive and keep the funding going, and then AI, if there's a repeal of that presidential executive order that Biden signed trying to ensure companies go forward with safe AI.
Dan, good to see you. Thank you.
