If you logged in X or Bluesky last week, it was probably swept in the Trump’s publications attack reciprocal tariffs and the stock market. And, if you follow the technological industry as close as me, probably also note who No Publishing on the rates: many of the same founders and CEO of technology that flanked Trump on the day of inauguration in January. Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook, Sussale Pichai and Mark Zuckerberg have kept Mom on the theme of tariffs (although both Pichai and Zuckerberg have continued publishing about AI). Meanwhile, Elon Musk, well, we will get to that.
The silence was deafenor, considering that the “magnificent seven” Collectively losses billion of dollars in market value after the announcement of Trump rates last week. But there is a cold logic behind these technological leaders who support their languages in public, particularly for those who sell hardware. The United States has become a highly volatile nation where the president’s whims must be taken into account before using any political chip or making a public statement, especially in an environment where that statement could be irrelevant one hour later.
“The sand does not stop changing enough time to make a convincing statement,” a communications executive tells me, who has worked closely with two great technology CEO.
Technology CEOs are not in fact remain silent. They are simply pressing behind the scene in their own name. Niki Christoff, a political strategist from Washington, DC, and former assistant of Senator John McCain during his 2008 presidential campaign, says that most of the strategies around commercial rules, and conversations with Trump’s staff, are occurring through the subsequent channels at this time. “There is a lot of personal marking and trying to make offers,” he says.
During Trump’s first mandate, Cook carefully cultivated A direct relationship with the president to press it on issues such as trade and immigration. I find it hard to imagine that Cook is not using that direct line now. The executive president of Nvidia, Jensen Huang, who did not attend the opening ceremony, As reported, he went to A $ 1 million head dinner in Mar-A-Lago last week. Shortly after, the White House returned to the plans to implement export controls in some chips that Nvidia sells to China.
Private back channels allow each technological leader to press for exemptions of specific rates. The type of exemptions that would benefit Nvidia, such as the most indulgent policies in semiconductor imports for GPUs, differ from what Apple could be distressed, considering the complexity of the company’s supply chain and its China dependence. “Broadly opposite tariffs are not useful if business leaders can obtain exemptions on their own products,” says Christoff.
At the same time, technology CEOs are allowing commercial organizations, such as Roundable Business, which represents a series of large technology companies, including Alphabet and Amazon, make some of their lobbying for them, the sources tell Wired. The CEO of the Round Business Table, Joshua Bolten, published A statement Urge the administration to “quickly reach the agreements” with its commercial partners and implement “reasonable exemptions.” The CEO have also been able to be delayed, while bankers like JP Morgan Chase Jamie Dimon’s CEO do Public statements on the lasting negative impact of rates about the economy, and while the multi -million dollar coverage financier Bill Ackman maintains Tweet through him. (And really, what the CEO of Tech wants to be part of a summary story that also includes the Market Createrification Tweets of an anonymous x user called “Walter Bloomberg”?)
There have been some atypical values. The Amazon CEO, Andy Jassy, said he thinks the vast network of Amazon third party sellers could end Passing the cost of tariffs to consumers. Last week, Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella, sat next to Bill Gates and former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer for an interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin by CNBC, who asked about the tariffs. Ballmer told Sorkin that “he took the economy enough at the university to (knowing that) tariffs will really bring some agitation” and that “interruption is very difficult for people.”
