With the re-election of Donald Trump as US President, the largest technology companies hope for a more lenient attitude from the authorities towards mergers and acquisitions, a weakening of the most stringent antitrust laws and more intensive development of artificial intelligence systems, writes the Financial Times.
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Leaders of major tech companies were quick to congratulate Mr Trump on his landslide election victory as they seek to reconnect with the president-elect and his powerful backer Elon Musk ahead of a transformative period for the sector. Last Wednesday, executives from Amazon, Apple, Meta✴ and Microsoft posted messages of support on social media that contrasted with their more muted reactions to the 2016 and 2020 election results. While Democrat Joe Biden’s presidency brought them regulatory scrutiny and threats of antitrust sanctions, Trump has a reputation for being friendlier to technology and business. Musk has already taken on the role of Trump’s emissary in the tech world – the businessman has spent more than $100 million supporting his campaign, and the politician has called him a “super genius” and promised a position as a consultant on cutting government spending and regulations.
Trump’s second term is expected to be a catalyst for corporate takeovers, private equity deals and venture capital exits – all of which have been paralyzed by Biden’s increased regulatory scrutiny and high interest rates. Instead of acquiring promising startups outright, Microsoft, Amazon and Google have been forced to get creative by hiring their founders or licensing their technology to avoid traditional antitrust scrutiny. Venture capital-backed startups were unable to make profitable sales out of fear that deals would be rejected.
The main opponents of the mergers were Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chairman Lina Khan and Justice Department Antitrust Chief Jonathan Kanter – they blocked deals, put pressure on technology monopolies and scrutinized partnerships between AI startups and large companies. technology companies, including Microsoft. Negotiations on new deals have already begun, experts indicate, by the time regulatory approval for mergers and acquisitions is required, Lina Khan will leave her post at the FTC and return to academic work. The dollar and stock markets are showing growth.
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With Trump back in the White House, the nature of antitrust investigations in the US and Europe will change to a less stringent one. Trump was congratulated on his victory by Apple CEO Tim Cook, who helped raise funds for his rival Hillary Clinton in 2016, but subsequently managed to establish a good relationship with him. Until now, Cook has preferred to keep a low profile as his Apple trust came under pressure from regulators around the world. Khan and Kanter launched a large-scale campaign against the dominance of big tech companies: the Justice Department won a major case against Google’s monopoly in the web search market; lawsuits have been filed against Apple, Amazon and Meta✴.
The new president could order the Justice Department to withdraw the antitrust lawsuit against Apple filed this year. The company also faces a fine under the European Digital Markets Act (DMA) for its policies in the App Store – Trump does not hide his negative attitude towards the EU regulator. The White House may begin to put pressure on the EU and UK to stop harassing American companies, especially in light of the “Chinese threat.” In October, Trump said that Cook had complained to him about repression in Europe: Apple was being asked to pay back taxes of €13 billion and an antitrust fine of €1.8 billion. However, Trump’s relationship with antitrust agencies is complicated: a major antitrust lawsuit against Google, which the company lost in a case this year, was filed during his previous tenure as president. And new US Vice President JD Vance has previously spoken out in support of Lina Khan – and even in favor of breaking up Google as a remedy in an antitrust case.
Social media companies are already trying to avoid the wrath of Trump, who has accused them of censorship and suppressing conservative views. In 2022, he said that if re-elected, he would issue an executive order prohibiting federal agencies from “conspiring with any organization, entity, or person to censor, restrict, categorize, or impede the lawful speech of American citizens” and limit funding to universities that was found to have “participated in censorship activities.” Mark Zuckerberg, the head of Meta✴, which owns Facebook✴ and Instagram✴, has also begun to show signs of sympathy for Trump. Over the summer, he called Trump a “tough guy” for his response to the assassination attempt and sent a letter to the Republican-controlled House Judiciary Committee accusing Biden of repeatedly trying to pressure Meta to “censor” certain COVID-19 material during the pandemic. The day before, Zuckerberg congratulated Trump on his election and expressed his desire to begin working together.
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Further developments regarding TikTok, the Chinese company ByteDance that owns the platform, and the threats they allegedly pose to US national security will be of great importance. Trump proposed banning TikTok in 2020 while he was president, but later changed his position and said he would not ban the app because it was in America’s interest to provide competition to Facebook✴, which he called “the enemy of the people.” The TikTok administration has sued the US government to overturn a law passed under Biden that requires the company to sever ties with ByteDance or stop operating in the US by mid-January. Blocking the $230 billion short-video platform could hurt American investors—the head of one of the companies was a major donor to Trump’s campaign this year.
Trump has not yet formulated a clear approach to AI, but this area is predicted to dawn during his new presidency. In his first term, he issued an executive order “designed to strengthen American leadership in AI,” noting that “overly restrictive policies could hamper or drive innovation overseas.” But that was before AI became one of the most lucrative investments in Silicon Valley. Trump has vowed to reverse Biden’s order, which reflects Democrats’ cautious approach and emphasis on safety standards at the expense of unfettered innovation. The president-elect also said he would ban the use of AI to censor the speech of American citizens “from day one.”
In this, his position coincides with that of Musk, who points to the importance of the US victory over China in the global AI race. Musk has raised billions of dollars in funding for his startup xAI, although he has warned that uncontrolled AI development threatens the existence of humanity. The businessman is suing OpenAI, which he co-founded with Sam Altman in 2015, for straying from its original nonprofit mission to develop AI for everyone. Now the creator of ChatGPT is one of the most valuable private companies in the world and is valued at $150 billion. And if in 2016 Altman called Trump’s first election “the worst thing that happened in my life,” now he congratulated the politician and wished him “tremendous success in this work.”