In the aftermath of the 2024 presidential elections, the narrative was that the 47th US president would help spur deregulation, particularly in the tech sector, remove barriers to mergers and acquisitions, and even dilute antitrust rules to strengthen America’s long-term competitiveness against key tech rival China. Venture capitalists talked about dozens of tech start-ups eager to raise tens of billions of dollars in initial public offerings. The listings and capital raising were supposed to further fuel the ongoing boom in artificial intelligence (AI). From Silicon Valley to Wall Street to Main Street USA, good times were ready to roll again.
If you’ve been following US President Donald Trump’s tariff policies — marked by erratic exemptions and exceptions across companies, sectors and countries — you probably heard Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent discussing “untariffing”, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick advocating for “retariffing” or a White House aide promoting the idea of “escalating to de-escalate” trade wars. Amid all this hullabaloo, you may have missed another significant story: the global “Big Tech” firms and America’s efforts to regulate or re-regulate them.
Hours after Donald Trump was re-elected last November, America’s top tech billionaires — including Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, Meta Platforms founder Mark Zuckerberg and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman — rushed to congratulate him, saying they were “looking forward to engaging” with the new administration to foster “innovation” and strengthen American “leadership” in tech. Silicon Valley Tech Bros, traditionally allied to the Democratic Party, had backed Trump in the November election. They trotted to Mar-a-Lago pledging donations. Hanging around the patio of Trump’s Florida resort home, sipping cocktails, was electric vehicle pioneer Tesla Inc’s CEO, Elon Musk, the world’s richest man (net worth US$370 billion ($486 billion)), who spent over US$290 million to get the president re-elected.
