As President-elect Donald Trump readies his return to the White House, big tech companies are making a calculated effort to placate the new administration, with Amazon and Meta taking the lead on money and politics.
Amazon will pledge $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund, more than double the $58,000 it donated in 2017 for his first inauguration. In addition to that, it will provide another $1 million in-kind through streaming the January 20, 2025, inauguration on Amazon Video.
Meta, now Facebook, is playing tit for tat by saying it would match the commitment, which is worth $1 million, unlike last time around when it failed to commit to the 2017 inaugural fund. Mark Zuckerberg has been pretty active lately in rebuilding bridges with the former president; recently he visited Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida. Post the meeting, Meta said it was thankful for being invited and referred to this as an “important time for the future of American innovation.
Jeff Bezos CEO of Amazon heading to “Mar-a-Lago”
The approach of the tech industry is quite different from that of the previous administration. President Joe Biden’s team refused to take tech donations for his 2021 inauguration, which marked a huge shift in the current scenario.
Amazon’s executive chairman Jeff Bezos, with whom Trump has had a very contentious history, is also heading to Mar-a-Lago. Despite past conflicts, which included Trump’s attacks on Amazon as a monopoly and derogatory nicknames for Bezos, he seemed optimistic about the potential to work together. He appeared to be hopeful about Trump’s second term, especially with regard to deregulation that could benefit business.
Similarly, Google is engaging with the new administration. CEO Sundar Pichai had planned to visit Mar-a-Lago, expressing enthusiasm about potential joint “Manhattan Project” type initiatives in artificial intelligence. Pichai told Semafor he thinks that there is an opportunity for national cooperation, citing massive infrastructure projects as the ways to speed up the country.
The approaches of the tech leaders seem carefully calibrated. At DealBook Summit, Pichai publicly clarified that his recent communications with Trump have nothing to do with the federal antitrust lawsuits presently being waged against Google.
This is where history can provide interesting perspectives on these donations. During Trump’s first inauguration, tech contributions varied significantly: Google donated $285,000 while Samsung contributed $100,000.
These gestures would have indicated that the tech heads pragmatically and strategically maneuver themselves to stay within good books of a possibly business-friendly administration, directly through interface, monetary contribution, and placing one’s companies into the fray as a potential partner in technological and economic innovations.
The Trump administration’s renewed interest in tech also aligns with broader challenges of regulation, potential antitrust investigations, and the fast-changing artificial intelligence sector. Through these early diplomatic channels, they like to nudge policy discourses away from diluting competitive advantages.
As the inauguration draws near, these donations and meetings sometimes reveal complicated relationships between technology leaders and power sources within the political orbit, where strategic positioning often trumps past issues.
