With inauguration donations and Mar-a-Lago visits, leaders of the biggest tech companies sought favor with the president in an attempt to steer regulation and tariffs, to little avail.
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By Cecilia Kang | Para netogaia.com.br
Reporting from Washington
April 8, 2025, 5:01 a.m. ET
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The biggest technology companies and their chief executives donated millions to President Trump’s inauguration, hosted black-tie parties and dinners in his honor, and allowed him to announce and take credit for new multibillion-dollar manufacturing projects.
But less than three months into the president’s second term, Mr. Trump has hardly returned their lavish gestures with favors.
The sweeping tariffs he imposed last week will squeeze Apple’s iPhone supply chain and make it much more expensive for Amazon, Meta, Google and Microsoft to build supercomputers to power artificial intelligence. The president has slashed federal funding for research into emerging technologies like A.I. and quantum computing. His immigration clampdown has incited fears that he will cut off pipelines for tech talent.
The Trump administration has also signaled that it will continue an aggressive regulatory stance on reining in the power of the biggest tech companies, beginning next week with a landmark antitrust trial to break up Meta, the owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
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Since the inauguration, the combined market value of Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta and Microsoft has fallen 22 percent to $10 trillion. And the tech-heavy Nasdaq index is down 21 percent.
The efforts to court Mr. Trump are a far stretch from the industry’s approach to his first administration, when many tech leaders were openly hostile toward the president. With an about-face and flattery, executives hoped this time around that Mr. Trump might show tech more deference, including it in his efforts to deregulate industries like energy and autos.
Instead, the genuflection of Silicon Valley’s top leaders may be a misreading of how to succeed in Mr. Trump’s Washington, according to Democratic and Republican policy experts.
The relationship that tech executives have with the president has been a “one-way street,” said Gigi Sohn, a former senior adviser to the Federal Communications Commission under the Biden administration. “They give him everything, and he promises nothing, which in this case is a good thing.”
That hasn’t stopped them from trying. Last week, Meta’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, was at the White House to try to persuade the administration to settle the Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust lawsuit against Meta. Tech leaders including Sundar Pichai, the chief executive of Google, have also visited the White House in recent weeks.
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The companies have said that they want to engage with Mr. Trump on a variety of issues and that they are looking at the long-range effects of his policies. Apple, Google, Meta and Amazon declined to comment.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
The hostilities between the tech industry and Mr. Trump date back to at least 2016, when multiple tech executives endorsed Hillary Clinton for president and donated to her campaign. After Mr. Trump was elected, tech leaders criticized the president’s immigration ban for Muslims and his skepticism about Covid-19 vaccines.
Mr. Trump’s first administration took a tough regulatory stance on the industry, filing antitrust lawsuits against Google and Meta. He railed against social media and other internet giants for censoring him and amassing too much power. He also blamed the platforms for contributing to his election loss in 2020.
The tech industry’s public tone toward Mr. Trump abruptly shifted last year after he was wounded in an assassination attempt.
In the aftermath, Mr. Zuckerberg called him a “badass.” Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, commended Mr. Trump for “grace under fire.” Elon Musk, who leads the rocket company SpaceX, the electric carmaker Tesla and the social media platform X, endorsed Mr. Trump and went on to stump for and donate $300 million to his campaign.
Recebido às 10h 20, atualizado às 10h 50, desta terça-feira, 8.