Donald Trump’s re-election as U.S. president will have massive repercussions for the technology sector.
It is always risky to make predictions, and that holds particularly true when the main character involved is someone prone to surprising, rash, and often erratic decision-making, and who has a track record of being easily swayed by whoever has his ear at the moment.
But Trump has expressed views on a variety of important tech topics, and it is also reasonable to take into account the views and motivations of key advisors including Elon Musk, who has emerged in the last few months of the presidential campaign as one of Trump's most important and trusted allies. So here is a quick rundown of what Trump 2.0 probably means for issues such as AI, antitrust, and semiconductors.
Antitrust
Apart from Trump's near-certain deregulation of cryptocurrencies—the crypto markets are furiously celebrating his victory—the likeliest thing that will happen in January would be the removal of Lina Khan as head of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which enforces the U.S.’s antitrust laws.
Khan, a Biden appointee, brought a radical interpretation of antitrust to the agency—essentially, she updated its traditional focus on artificially high prices as the primary gauge of consumer harm for an age in which people use many tech services for free, and the providers of those services can amass and abuse outsized power in other ways. Khan made her name with a student article attacking Amazon, and has been an unusually aggressive enforcer. Big Tech and other megacorporations hate her, and Elon Musk has called for her firing. (Khan's term as FTC Chair formally ended on September 26, but Commission Chairs can continue to serve until the President appoints a replacement who is confirmed by the Senate.)
So although incoming vice-president JD Vance is a fan, Khan will probably go and the FTC will change again—but it is not yet clear how much that will temper the agency’s aggression.
Some of its most consequential ongoing cases, including a Meta case that could theoretically lead to the unwinding of its Instagram and WhatsApp purchases, were initiated during the first Trump administration. Trump this year called Facebook “an enemy of the people,” though CEO Mark Zuckerberg then went out of his way to appear neutral during the election.
Trump’s first FTC also sued Google over its search monopoly, resulting this year in a landmark ruling against the company. Biden’s Justice Department is considering pushing for a Google breakup as a result, and Trump’s second administration could well continue down that path. Trump recently called Google “rigged”, but he hasn’t said whether he will pursue a breakup.
The FTC also recently won the right to proceed with an antitrust suit against Amazon for “suppressed competition and higher prices for shoppers and sellers.” Amazon and Trump famously tangled during his first administration, but chairman and founder Jeff Bezos recently stopped his Washington Post from endorsing Kamala Harris, in a move widely seen as an attempt to appease Trump.
AI
Khan’s FTC has also been investigating the largest AI players—such as Microsoft, OpenAI, and Nvidia—to see if their whirlwind dealmaking has broken antitrust laws. These efforts are unlikely to continue as Trump returns.
Trump is no fan of regulating AI companies, and the same can be said for backers like venture capitalist Marc Andreessen. Trump’s campaign manifesto included a pledge to repeal Biden’s 2023 executive order on AI, which was a first step towards regulating against multiple AI risks—according to Trump, these were “Radical Leftwing ideas.”
“I fear that [Trump’s return] will lead to further deregulation of the tech sector resulting in detrimental impact on human rights worldwide,” said Professor Sandra Wachter of the Oxford Internet Institute, a leading figure in the study of tech and regulation.
“I worry about unsafe, inaccurate, biased and opaque AI used for hiring, school admission, loan decisions and healthcare," she said. "I worry about the fast spread of misinformation, hate speech and toxic content on the Internet. I worry that AI will replace and displace many jobs and workers. The impact on the climate change can also not be overestimated since the development of AI costs an unimaginable number of resources.”
In the area of AI—as well as those of electric vehicles, space flight, and biotech—Elon Musk is likely to prove influential. Trump intends to put Musk in charge of reorganizing the U.S. government, which could provide opportunities for Musk’s xAI and his other companies. (Tesla’s share price leapt by more than 10% in response to the election result, despite the prospect of Musk being spread even more thinly than he already is.) Meta this week also announced a big push to get the U.S. military and other government agencies using its Llama AI models; the future of that push is now in doubt.
Musk’s ongoing feud with OpenAI may also now disadvantage that firm, though Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner is the brother of Josh Kushner, whose Thrive Capital is a major and longstanding OpenAI investor. (Jared sold his Thrive stake during the first Trump administration, in which he played a part.) Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, has also made enthusiastic comments about the views of former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner, who has warned about security lapses at OpenAI and other top AI labs, who believes that artificial general intelligence (AGI, a theoretical AI superintelligence) will emerge within the next few years, and who has called for a Manhattan Project-like U.S. effort to develop AGI before China does.
Zooming out to a wider geopolitical view, Trump’s isolationist tendencies may give China more scope to exert its own influence around the world—perhaps promoting Chinese AI in the bargain.
China and chips
The way Trump handles China will also determine the near-term future of the chip industry, with knock-on effects on everything from AI to automotive.
Although Biden and the Democrats have also been tough on China, curbing the export of the most poweful AI chips to the country and trying hard to kill China’s ability to make its own advanced chips using Western technology, Trump could well ignite a full-scale trade war with China. This would clearly impact Apple and other Big Tech firms that lean heavily on Chinese production, and it would also prove problematic for Taiwan, the chipmaking powerhouse that relies on its unfriendly neighbor for key materials.
It remains to be seen how Trump addresses China’s longstanding desire to invade and annex Taiwan, which Beijing regards as a renegade province. He has signaled a potential reduction in U.S. military support for Taiwan, describing the U.S. as an “insurance company” in this context, and there are widespread concerns that he may treat Taiwan as a bargaining chip in future negotiations with China. Again, if Taiwan becomes part of China, that would utterly reshape the chip industry.
Meanwhile, Trump has derided Biden’s CHIPS Act, which provides heavy incentives for chipmakers to set up manufacturing on U.S. soil, as “so bad.” He explained last week that he finds tariffs preferable as a means of countering China—although importers rather than exporters have to pay tariffs, so it remains unclear how Trump's policy would accomplish his stated aim.
Social media and privacy
Also on the subject of China, Trump has changed his mind on the banning of TikTok, which he favored during his first term. Earlier this year, after meeting with Republican megadonor and TikTok investor Jeff Yass, he came out against a bipartisan, Biden-backed push to force China’s ByteDance to sell TikTok or see it banned in the U.S. That bill passed anyway, and the clock is now ticking for ByteDance, but Trump—who joined TikTok in June—could change that.
Trump also tried to roll back parts of a key law known as Section 230 during his first term, though Biden cancelled his executive order on the subject. Section 230 of the Communications Act gives social media firms immunity for the content their users post, and for the way they moderate that content. As such, it is is seen as essential by Silicon Valley, but Republican lawmakers have targeted it for protecting social platforms when they remove right-wing disinformation and hate speech.
The tech industry has been nervous about what Trump, who now has his own social network in the form of Truth Social, might do about Section 230 the second time around. They will soon find out.
Meanwhile, social media firms should also keep an eye on how the Trump administration’s conduct affects their ability to easily serve users in Europe. Luckily for them, EU privacy watchdogs yesterday published a report approving of how the U.S. has been implementing a data-sharing agreement called the Data Privacy Framework—the third deal of its kind, after the EU’s top court sunk the previous two over U.S. intelligence’s access to Europeans’ U.S.-held data.
But the watchdogs will review it again in a few years, and the deal is still likely to face its own legal challenge in Europe, so any misuse of U.S. intelligence agencies’ data troves by the Trump administration would count against the framework’s survival.
