How Big Tech’s Faustian bargain with Trump backfired

The most indelible image from Donald Trump’s inauguration in January is not the image of the president taking the oath of office without his hand on the Bible. It is not the image of the First Lady scowling under the capacious brim of her hat or the memeified image of Hillary Clinton giggling at Trump’s mention of the “Gulf of America.”

It is, of course, the image of the world’s richest and most influential men—henceforth known as the broligarchy—lined up both literally and figuratively behind Trump. It was a carefully choreographed moment designed to illustrate Trump’s strength. But the tableau could also be viewed another way: as a bunch of billionaires who looked scared out of their minds.

Just about every man in the lineup had faced off against Trump in his first term: Mark Zuckerberg deemed him too dangerous for Facebook. Jeff Bezos sued him for harboring a “personal vendetta” that allegedly cost Amazon a $10 billion cloud contract. Tim Cook called Trump’s immigrant family separations “inhumane” and condemned his “moral equivalence” after the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville. And when Sundar Pichai protested Trump’s ban on immigration from majority Muslim countries, Sergey Brin was right there with him. Even Elon Musk clashed with Trump 1.0 after the president pulled out of the Paris climate accords.

Now, all of these men stood side by side on the dais, many of them in what appeared to be a naked act of self-preservation as Trump’s retributive and transactional second term took off. 

So, 100 days in, how have these business leaders been rewarded for their subservience? Why, with tariffs and trials and tanking stock prices, of course.

The billionaires have begged and bargained in the Oval Office, they’ve kicked millions of dollars Trump’s way, and they’ve compromised on the values they once professed to hold dear. But while their fates under Trump’s second term certainly could have been worse—the president once threatened Zuckerberg, for one, with life in prison—the president has yet to totally forgive and forget. 

Take Zuckerberg. As Trump took office, the Meta founder bent over backwards to appease him, very publicly announcing, though not in so many words, that he would make it easier for people to say hateful things about immigrants and trans people on Facebook and Instagram and shelling out $25 million to settle a baseless lawsuit Trump filed after being banned from Facebook. But none of that insulated Zuckerberg from the Federal Trade Commission’s ongoing antitrust lawsuit, which seeks to unravel Meta’s ownership of Instagram and WhatsApp. 

The same goes for Google, which is currently facing its own antitrust trial, through which the Department of Justice has asked a district court to force the search giant to sell off its valuable Chrome browser.

As one Trump ally recently told The New York Times about the Meta case: “The president still wants his pound of flesh.”

Tech leaders’ fealty also hasn’t shielded them from turmoil tied to Trump’s so-called Liberation Day tariffs, which briefly sent the global markets into freefall. Meta’s stock price plunged on the fear that advertising would dry up. Amazon got walloped as Trump imposed a 145% tariff on goods from China, tossing a grenade into its global supply chain. Google’s data center expansion plans were poised to suffer, as construction costs were set to skyrocket. Even Apple, which scored a tariff exemption on goods from China, may not be spared forever—a possibility the company is preparing for as it scrambles to move iPhone production to India. 

Trump’s so-called reciprocal tariffs are still on hold, but all of these companies are still struggling to find their footing in the face of so much uncertainty. 

Then there’s the relentless assault on the very infrastructure that made the United States a tech powerhouse to begin with. Funding for key research institutions has been gutted, driving scientists overseas. Billions in broadband expansion grants have been held up, stalling projects meant to bring faster internet access to rural America. Trump even said during his joint address to Congress that he wanted to “get rid of the CHIPS Act,” a rare spot of bipartisan consensus designed to spur the construction of new semiconductor plants through billions of dollars in Congressional funding. (So far, the president seems satisfied placing CHIPS Act programming under a new office that will, he says, strike “much better deals.”) 

The war on talent has been just as chilling, as the U.S. government revoked more than 1,500 student visas in recent months, before abruptly reversing course. Already experts have called the crackdown a “gift to China,” which is eager for U.S.-educated STEM graduates to return home. 

At this point, it’s hard to see what’s in it for the broligarchs. That’s doubly true for Musk. The cost of aligning himself with Trump—and becoming the chainsaw-wielding face of his government slashing effort—has been particularly steep. His popularity has sunk alongside Tesla’s profits, as protests of the electric vehicle maker have exploded. 

And yet, at least Musk is an indisputably true believer in Trump’s cause. Unlike the others who scrambled to make nice with Trump after election day, Musk spent nearly $300 million to get him and other Republicans elected last November. He recruited fellow investors and software engineers to do his bidding at the Department of Government Efficiency, unleashed AI tools on government databases, and bulldozed the regulatory state that he so loathes. 

After 100 days, Musk may be the only one standing on the dais who got exactly what he paid for.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91324317/how-big-techs-faustian-bargain-with-trump-backfired?partner=rss&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=rss+fastcompany&utm_content=rss