As President Donald Trump threatened and then delayed the global tariffs (except for China) Big Tech CEOs were hard at work… lobbying, according to a report from WIRED.
With the exception of Elon Musk, a Trump ally who openly disagreed with POTUS on the tariffs, Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai, and Mark Zuckerberg, all stayed silent in the public eye on the topic.
Some experts have said the CEOs proverbially ‘kissed the ring’ of Trump on inauguration day. Yet, as they all lost millions when stocks crashed with the pending tax, they stayed silent to protect their companies.
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“The US has become a highly volatile nation where the whims of the president must be taken into consideration before using any political chip or making a public statement, especially in an environment where that statement could be irrelevant an hour later,” penned Lauren Goode. “Tech CEOs aren’t actually staying silent. They’re simply lobbying behind the scenes on their own behalf.”
It’s not the first time Big Tech leaders have been accused of silently pulling strings with Trump. “During Trump’s first term, [Tim] Cook carefully cultivated a direct relationship with the president in order to lobby him on issues like trade and immigration,” Goode noted. “I have a hard time imagining Cook isn’t using that direct line now.”
However, many other CEOs are not getting their hands dirty. “At the same time tech CEOs are letting trade organizations, like Business Roundtable, which represents a number of big tech firms including Alphabet and Amazon, do some of their lobbying for them,” according to WIRED’s sources.
“Behind the curtain, they were always working the gears of a brutally capitalistic machine. Now, for them, public silence is golden, and private lobbying is worth the world’s stores in gold, especially when faced with an injuriously erratic president.”
