From chip war to TikTok ban: what tech can expect from the return of Donald Trump

Silicon Valley is bracing for a vastly different relationship with the US government as Donald Trump returns to the White House with promises to undo many of his predecessor’s policies and Elon Musk poised to play an influential role.

On artificial intelligence (AI), Trump has vowed to rip up an executive order from President Joe Biden aimed at putting safety guard rails on the emerging technology. In antitrust, the new administration is expected to seek a lighter touch with merger oversight, while on semiconductors, the president-elect has expressed misgivings about a bipartisan programme using government investment to boost domestic chip production.

Industry leaders could see a reprise of the tense relations during Trump’s first term, when he clashed with some tech executives including Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos and cultivated cordial ties with others such as Apple CEO Tim Cook. Since leaving office, Trump has complained that Alphabet’s Google suppresses good news about him and accused Meta Platforms of unfairly banning him from Facebook and Instagram in 2021.

Trump had support from some of tech’s biggest names, led by Musk, the world’s richest man, who poured more than US$130 million of his own money into a pro-Trump super-PAC and Republican congressional campaigns. Musk addressed a rally in Pennsylvania for Trump and used his ownership of X – the social-media site formerly known as Twitter – to amplify the Republican’s message to hundreds of millions of users.