What Trump 2.0 means for the Magnificent 7
What Trump has recently said about these companies and what they’ve said about him.
What we know so far about Donald Trump’s decisive victory is that, for now, it has been good for the overall stock market and it’s been really good for a federal immigration contractor and private prison company. Everything in between is a bit less certain. Take, for example, the Magnificent 7 tech stocks — Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla. The CEOs of these powerhouse companies have been tripping over themselves to congratulate the president-elect in an effort to get on the good side of a man notorious for holding a grudge — and some of them upset Trump the last time around.
What the future holds for these companies under a Trump sequel isn’t entirely clear, since he’s had a decidedly mixed relationship with them in the past and has given mixed messages as far as their future.
What follows is a brief overview of what Trump has recently said about these companies and what they’ve said about him.
Alphabet
The DOJ is currently pursuing two antitrust cases against Alphabet’s Google: one in search, where it’s already found Google to be a monopoly, and one in advertising. Investors seem to be assuming that a second Trump administration would be lighter on regulating these companies than Biden and current head of the Federal Trade Commission, Lina Khan, have been.
That said, Trump, who has criticized Google in the past for what he saw as biased search results, seems pretty ambivalent on Google lately.
“Google’s got a lot of power. They’re very bad to me. Very, very bad to me,” he said during an October 15 interview at the Economic Club of Chicago. Regarding breaking the company up, he said, “I’d do something.”
However, later in the interview Trump appeared to soften.
“If you do that, are you going to destroy the company?” he asked. “What you can do without breaking it up is make sure that it’s more fair. They do treat me very badly.”
This was less than a month after Trump had threatened on Truth Social to prosecute Google over search results he said favored his competitor, Kamala Harris.
Trump’s VP, JD Vance, has praised Khan and argued for the breakup of Google, but he’s just the VP.
Amazon
Trump’s first term was tempestuous for Amazon. The company accused Trump of using “improper pressure” to push Amazon out of a $10 billion Pentagon contract because its CEO Jeff Bezos was a “perceived political enemy.”
This time around, Bezos is pulling out all the stops to try and repair the relationship.
Bezos stopped the newspaper he owns, The Washington Post, from endorsing Harris. He was also first in line to congratulate Trump for his “extraordinary political comeback and decisive victory.” Bezos had also buttered up Trump after the failed assassination attempt in July.
It’s notable that in addition to e-commerce giant Amazon — which regulators have accused of illegally maintaining a monopoly — Bezos also owns Blue Origin, a competitor to SpaceX, which is led by Elon Musk, one of the Trump campaign’s biggest donors.
Apple
Compared with the other Big Tech companies, Apple enjoyed a much more amicable relationship with Trump during his first presidency.
Trump praised CEO Tim Cook, who called the president directly to discuss business issues. Perhaps as a result, the iPhone maker wasn’t subject to some of the tariffs other companies manufacturing in China faced.
This time around Trump has vowed to put a 60% tariff on goods manufactured in China.
When asked on the latest earnings call in October how Apple would deal with any tariffs from a new administration, Cook demurred. “I wouldn't want to speculate about those sorts of things,” he said.
Meta
In Trump’s newest book, he accused Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg of plotting against him in the 2020 election and threatened him with “life in prison” if he did it again.
Zuckerberg appears to have gotten the memo. He has said he wants out of politics while at the same time moving decidedly to the right. This summer Zuckerberg said he was “praying” for Trump’s recovery following the assassination attempt and has been speaking with the president directly. Zuckerberg also apologized to Trump after Meta’s AI mistakenly took down photos of the assassination attempt. Trump said Zuckerberg told him “there’s no way I can vote for a Democrat in this election.”
Last month during a podcast interview with Barstool Sports’ “Bussin’ With The Boys,” Trump said he likes Zuckerberg “much better now.” Trump added, “I actually believe he’s staying out of the election, which is nice.”
Microsoft and Nvidia
Like many of the other Magnificent 7 tech companies, the fate of Microsoft and Nvidia is largely tied up with AI. Microsoft has made substantial investments into genAI leader OpenAI. Nvidia makes chips that are basically powering the AI revolution.
As such, Trump could be good news for both companies. As my colleague Jon Keegan noted, the GOP platform specifically calls for repealing Biden’s 2023 AI executive order, saying:
“We will repeal Joe Biden’s dangerous Executive Order that hinders AI Innovation, and imposes Radical Leftwing ideas on the development of this technology. In its place, Republicans support AI Development rooted in Free Speech and Human Flourishing.”
Both companies are also facing government antitrust investigations over their dominant roles in the AI industry, so if Trump is softer on antitrust regulation, that would be good news for them.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella tweeted to Trump after his victory, “We’re looking forward to engaging with you and your administration to drive innovation forward that creates new growth and opportunity for the United States and the world.” This summer Microsoft notified Trump that the Iranian government had hacked one of his websites.
Trump’s promised tariffs, of course, could negatively affect Nvidia, since the vast majority of today’s advanced microprocessors are manufactured in Taiwan. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in September, in response to a question about the candidates’ different tax policies, “Whatever the tax rates are, we’ll support it.” He declined to endorse a candidate.
Tesla
Tesla potentially has a lot to gain from Trump’s election, putting it odds with other EV companies. After all, Musk was one of Trump’s biggest donors and actively campaigned for his win. Of the president-elect, Musk posted, “The second Trump Presidency will be the most fun America has had in a while.”
The second Trump Presidency will be the most fun America has had in a while.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 30, 2024
It’s gonna be awesome! 😎
Most notably, as “secretary of cost-cutting” Musk could decimate some of the government bodies that stand in the way of his rocket and car companies, namely NHTSA and FAA — the government bodies responsible for Americans’ safety on the roads and in the sky.
When asked on the second-quarter earnings call this summer how any cuts to Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which offers $7,500 in rebates for electric cars, would affect Tesla, Musk minimized them.
“I guess there would be like some impact,” he said. “But I think it would be devastating for our competitors and would hurt Tesla slightly.” Rather, he said, the “value of Tesla overwhelmingly is autonomy.” A federal regulatory environment that would be more likely to offer Tesla approval for autonomous cars would obviously be a boon for Tesla.
In response to Musk’s patronage, Trump has been heaping praise on Musk, calling him a “new star” and a “super genius” in his acceptance speech.
