Crypto, online betting, and vaping: Welcome to the Trump economy

From tariffs and big tech, to impacts on the free market—everyone wants to know what Trump’s return to office means for the business world. To cut through the noise, political scientist Ian Bremmer offers his insights. Bremmer, the founder and president of the global political risk firm, The Eurasia Group, reveals his thoughts on which industries are poised to thrive under a second Trump term, and what Elon Musk’s position means for U.S. capitalism.

This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former editor-in-chief of Fast Company Bob Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with today’s top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode.

With the election of Donald Trump, we’re facing a new swirl of uncertainty. And so I wanted to ask you: what questions are you hearing that CEOs and business leaders are asking themselves right now and maybe what questions should they be asking?

They’re asking mostly about tariffs, they’re asking mostly about immigrants and what that policy will look like because they both have a direct impact on inflation in the United States and the economy more broadly. They’re asking about U.S.-China relations, impact on globalization, and they’re asking a lot about personnel, because of course, there are a lot of sectors that feel like they’re going to do well under Trump.

Trump is very transactional. If you pay him, he usually gives you something directly back. So what does that mean? They want to know about what Elon means in the administration. What they’re not asking about is the rule of law in the United States. What they’re not asking about is whether or not a U.S.-led global order is over and what that means and how other countries are going to respond to it. Whether or not the transatlantic alliance will still be a thing at the end of this administration, and how. They’re also not asking, frankly, Bob, they’re not asking how much responsibility they have for why we’re in the situation we’re in right now.

I’d like to see more of that because Trump is not the cause of these problems. He’s a symptom of a system that has become kleptocratic and captured by special interests for decades now. And so the fact that all of the CEOs are all trying to figure out, okay, how do we best navigate this for ourselves, and we’re probably going to make an awful lot of money is kind of part of the problem. And I got a lot of examples of that, but no one’s asking about that.

You’ve called it a G-zero world for some time now, which is a world where global leadership is kind of breaking down, and there’s no clear center of gravity. And for a while, I thought, or maybe hoped, that business might provide a counterweight a little bit and fill that void. And what I’m hearing from you is like that responsibility doesn’t seem to be weighing, or it doesn’t seem to be driving a lot of the CEOs, at least that you’re hearing from, that it’s much smaller or more parochial priorities.

I think a lot of people were disappointed that so many Republicans folded after January 6th with Trump. I think a lot of people looking around the world are watching how all of these leaders who privately say that they think Trump is a disaster are all saying, “Oh, you’re wonderful, and we’re so happy you won, and congratulations, and we’re going to work with you.”

This happens in the CEO community too. And not just with Jeff Bezos, who, I mean, he’s not going to struggle financially. If Trump goes after him, he might not make it, right? And I’m being sarcastic, yes, but when I look at the CEOs that after January 6, so many of these corporations and financial institutions, they said we’re just not going to give money.

If you were a Republican that said that you weren’t prepared to certify the election outcomes, we’re just not going to give you any more money. The PACs are just, that’s it. That’s it. 

And maybe this is only something small that we can do, but the fact is table stakes for democracy should be you accept a free and fair transfer of power, period. And that lasted about six months. And it wasn’t like any of those people came back and they said, “Okay, we’re sorry. We really, we know that that was the wrong thing to do, and we accept it was a free and fair transfer of power.” 

No, no. It was rather the CEOs that are like, “Why should we bother? It’s actually inconvenient for us. Other companies are going to give money to them. And then if we don’t, we’re just stupid because we’re not going to have that influence.”

And so, what are the values? we used to stand for. We used to stand for the Charter of the United Nations. We created that after World War II.  We stood for human rights around the world. We stood for rule of law. We stood for democracy. We stood for collective security and free trade, and market access, and we didn’t always do it consistently. 

We were hypocritical, we could be exceptionalists, we could be high-handed and pedantic, but still, overall, for the last 50 years, most countries around the world, most people around the world, and most Americans would agree that we generally stood up for and supported that stuff.

I think that you have literally no idea what the United States stands for today, what the values are. And I think the reason you get so many young people that were willing to go and vote for Trump. 

Do you have a sense who will likely be the winners and losers of Trump’s second term?

Well, I think that winners and losers will be different. The regulatory environment and rollback. Oil and gas companies are going to do better in this environment. Crypto is going to do a lot better. Crypto gave more money than I think every other sector combined bundled to the Trump administration.

And that was a really good bet. Again, I don’t think that’s the way that our political system should work, but it does. And so I think these are going to be the most crypto-friendly rules that anyone is going to write in the history of the planet. And so that feels like a sector that’s going to do incredibly well.

Vaping is going to do really well. Finance is going to do really well. Online betting is going to do really well. Other sectors won’t do so well. So, I mean, big tech, interesting to watch, right? With the new FCC.

If you have a sense about sort of AI guardrails, tech policy, is there any clarity about where?

The executive order is going to get ripped up, which I thought was a fairly useful piece of regulation, even though it was still very early days. I mean, I think more of the question is going to be will you see, I mean, the Lina Khan effort to strip Chrome from Google is a pretty big deal whether or not it would stand up after years of fighting, who knows, but it obviously is a distraction and will hurt them.

Will you see more of that kind of thing when you have an FCC appointee that likes Musk but isn’t necessarily a fan of the Monopoly tech platforms? That’s a very interesting question. Trump during the first term did not really have a technology policy. Didn’t focus on it. This time around, he’s going to have a bunch of people that want the Americans to win vis a vis the Chinese.

For me, one of the things that’s interesting is the amount of money that you have to invest as a business to impact government policy and get those kinds of benefits is so relatively small in your business. I understand a hundred million dollars for Elon Musk, maybe a lot of money for you and me, but not Musk. And what happened to the market cap of Tesla afterwards? Like he’s, he’s made his money.

It’s a great bet. It’s just that it’s not a capitalist bet. It’s an inhumane bet because it’s not actually about survival of the fittest. It’s about survival of the people that are close enough that they can capture the political process. That’s not free and fair market capitalism. It’s not.

I do think that you can, capitalism is alive and strong in the United States. It really is small and medium businesses. We have the best environment in the world for start-up entrepreneurs. And I don’t just mean in the tech space, I mean, everywhere.

I mean, your local bodega, like your online little start-up. Someone that’s selling a product, he’s got an idea. She’s got a service, whatever it is. There are so many of those people and they’re brilliant. And they build.

The Shark Tank economy.

Absolutely the shark economy and Shark Tank itself, all of that stuff. Right? I mean, we do that. And if I had been born in another country, I wouldn’t have had this opportunity. I would have been like a nice, smart political scientist someplace making some consulting money, whatever and here I get to build a global business. Why? Because I live in the United States. That’s incredible. So it’s not like I don’t think everything about the U.S. is broken. Not at all. But I do think that at the high levels, the big industry, we have become kleptocratic. And, and that’s, I think that’s hard, and it’s not a Republican thing at all.

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