Elon Musk’s quick endorsement of President Trump following Saturday’s assassination attempt made many headlines. The Wall Street Journal Musk has suggested he is doubling down on his commitment to Trump by donating heavily to a pro-Trump super PAC. As per usual, Musk branded the story as a “fake wildebeest” and left only memes in the comments section. WSJ Posted on your own social media site X.
Typical of Musk’s behavior, his actions have sent ripples across the media and fueled exaggerated speculation that the former president is cultivating ties with tech giants and venture capitalists, groups that have historically been strong allies of the Democratic Party.
Trending articles have attempted to link the mercurial billionaire’s new public support for Trump to a marked shift in political leanings within the tech industry and the rest of the billionaire class. “Musk Accelerates Support for Trump in Silicon Valley,” one headline trumpeted.
Support from the tech elite is a myth
But Elon Musk’s endorsement of Donald Trump is hardly surprising. President Biden has publicly snubbed Tesla executives on multiple occasions. SpaceX’s rapid growth has only strengthened the company’s interest in winning more business from the federal government. Trump has launched a major public outreach campaign aimed at the world’s richest man and reversed his stance on electric cars. The calculation behind Musk’s decision is understandable.
And of course, the tech elite are switching sides in droves to support President Trump. But where are they all? For every Joe Lonsdale, Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, and Doug Leone, the Biden campaign has twice as many, including Alan Patricoff, Reid Hoffman, Reed Hastings, and Bill Gates.
Many prominent figures in the technology industry are not, and never have been, Trump donors or supporters: Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, Satya Nadella, Glenn Hutchins, Ann Winblad, Arvind Krishna, Roger McNamee, and Ruth Porat, to name just a few.
The same sentiment isn’t limited to big tech: A recent analysis found that the top 20 venture capital firms and their employees give roughly $2 to Democrats for every $1 they donate to Republicans, higher than the average over the past 10 election cycles.
Looking back, we see similar trends: Republican candidates received the same level of support as Mitt Romney did in 2012, when he garnered only a few key Silicon Valley supporters. The same is likely true in 2016. “Voices are getting louder,” said LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman. [for Trump]… But they were there. They probably voted for Trump last time. They’re probably going to vote for Trump this time.”
Tensions over President Trump’s tech
Many leaders in technology and other industries are reluctant to see another four years of President Biden’s administration, concerned about regulatory overreach and overzealous antitrust enforcement from a closed-minded Biden administration.
However disillusioned corporate leaders may be, they are not Trump followers. The Republican Party has historically alienated many in the tech industry because of differing cultural values on abortion, inclusive hiring practices, environmental sustainability, and more. Now, the new Republican Party, carefully crafted in Trump’s image, supports policies on international trade, antitrust, immigration, and other issues that run counter to the tech industry’s strategic priorities.
Trump has pledged to impose a 10% tariff on all imports into the United States and 60% or more on China, likely inciting retaliatory tariffs. Such protectionism would hit the tech industry hard. Even by conservative estimates, the U.S. tech industry earns more than $1 trillion a year from international business, more than any other industry. Some tech giants, such as Google and Microsoft, earn more than half of their annual sales from overseas markets, totaling $260 billion.
Silicon Valley also resents Trump’s hands-off interference and personal targeting of perceived opponents. This year, Trump backed off his opposition to TikTok, in part to anger Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, TikTok’s biggest rival. In his own words, “Getting rid of TikTok would double Facebook and Zuckerberg’s business… I don’t want to see Facebook do better after they stole our last election.”
Vance’s values clash with those of technology.
Paradoxically, technology leaders Vance supports Trump’s opposition to the Biden administration’s “crackdown on Big Tech takeovers,” but Trump is a leading Republican supporter of tougher antitrust enforcement, and in February he praised Federal Trade Commission Chairwoman Lina Khan, saying she was “one of the few people doing a very good job in the Biden administration.”
Vance would further strengthen federal regulation and oversight. He recently partnered with progressive colleagues, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren, to introduce bills ranging from “Ending Megamerger Subsidies” to breaking up big corporations. These policies go beyond the Biden administration’s antitrust laws and threaten to undermine the venture capital industry, which relies on M&A to divest.
On immigration, Vance has largely followed Trump in taking a tougher stance on immigration, with Trump already signaling his intention to seek a second term, calling for “the largest deportation campaign in American history” and abolishing birthright citizenship.
Vance attempted to falsely educate Americans about the labor economy and illegal immigration by arguing that “much of the job growth under the Biden administration has gone to the foreign-born,” even though the U.S. labor market is at full employment and data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that most job gains since 2018 have gone to naturalized U.S. citizens and legal residents. Ironically, if his position were the law, even Vance’s own in-laws would not have been able to enter the U.S. The technology industry is particularly dependent on skilled immigrants. One-quarter of the U.S. billion-dollar startups were founded by immigrants, as were two-thirds of AI companies.
Four years ago, the Rolling Stones and music publisher BMI sent a warning to the Trump campaign to stop promoting their songs. You don’t always get what you want At a rally. Perhaps it’s time for the tech industry to heed the lyrics of that Mick Jagger song and realize that this is one of the few times Trump has spoken truth in advertising.
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