Profits up, stocks down and angry calls: Tech giants playing nice with Trump hasn’t translated to a windfall

Tech CEOs lined up to “kiss the ring” after President Donald Trump was elected, dining with him at Mar-a-Lago and donating $1 million each to the inaugural fund.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Tesla CEO Elon Musk sat in the second row at Trump’s inauguration – better seats than some of the president’s cabinet.

But cozying up to Trump hasn’t necessarily translated into a financial windfall, as tech companies have experienced a mixed bag over the last few months in dealing with Trump’s agenda and his economic plans.

Tech billionaires Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang have lost $193.6 billion between them since Trump entered office, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

“The tech leaders had a buddy-buddy relationship with Trump early in the administration, but since then, it has been a rocky road,” Darrell West, senior fellow in the Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings Institution, told Business Insider.

“These efforts to build close relationships have not altogether paid dividends,” Andrew Lokay, a senior research analyst at Beacon Policy Advisors, told The Hill.

Trump’s 145 percent tariffs on China provoked Beijing to retaliate with 125 percent tariffs on the U.S., igniting a trade war between the world’s two largest economies.

If the two nations do not come to an agreement soon, the consequences could be devastating for companies such as Apple, where more than 75 percent of iPhones sold around the world are currently produced.

Cook, Apple’s CEO, was one of the tech executives who dined with Trump at Mar–a-Lago a month after his election win. Gene Munster, a managing partner at Deepwater Asset Management investment company, told The New York Times that a complete breakdown between the U.S. and China “would cut the value of Apple in half or more.”

To evade the worst of the tariffs, Apple is reportedly preparing to move production of all iPhones bound for U.S. sales from China to India.

Bezos also wined and dined with Trump in Mar-a-Lago shortly after The Washington Post owner announced he was putting a stop to opinion writers at the newspaper from voicing opposition to “personal liberties and free markets.”

Amazon is also producing the $40 million Melania Trump documentary.

This week, the Amazon boss felt Trump’s wrath when the White House publicly shamed the company over reported plans to display the increased costs of sweeping tariffs on its website.

Hours after a Punchbowl News report alleged Amazon would show the amount of money Trump’s aggressive tariff policy would add to the price of some of its products, the e-commerce giant issued a statement assuring people it was “not going to happen.” It was just after Trump made a personal call to Bezos after word of the company’s new plans.

“Jeff Bezos was very nice. He was terrific,” Trump said Tuesday after news of the phone call. “He solved the problem very quickly. And he did the right thing. He’s a good guy.”

It has also been a rocky start to the year for computer chip company Nvidia. In the last month, Nvidia’s shares have lost 3.5 percent and have retreated 14 percent in the last three months, according to Insider Monkey.

Nvidia’s CEO Huang did not attend Trump’s inauguration but did donate $1 million to the inaugural committee.

Stock surged after Trump announced a 90-day pause on tariffs for most countries, but by mid-April, shares had slumped after Nvidia said the Trump administration’s clampdown on exports of computer chips used for artificial intelligence will cost it an extra $5.5 billion.

Huang urged the president to change the regulations and ease up on exporting AI technology to the rest of the world, including China. Nvidia also announced it will produce AI supercomputers in the U.S. for the first time, which Trump claimed as a win.

At Meta, the financial picture is looking up after the company reported their first-quarter revenue rose by 16 percent as net income leaped 35 percent to $16.64 billion.

In early April, the Wall Street Journal reported that Meta could lose $7 billion in ad sales this year because of Trump’s tariffs. The tech company doesn’t operate in China, but advertisers such as Temu and Shein buy advertisements on its Facebook and Instagram platforms to reach U.S. customers.

After the results were reported, Zuckerberg said the company was “well positioned to navigate the macroeconomic uncertainty” following investor concerns about the tariffs.

Still, it hasn’t been plain sailing for Meta. In early April Meta’s stock was down 6 percent and Zuckerberg lost billions between “Liberation Day” on April 2 and April 9, when the markets were in meltdown over Trump’s tariffs.

Zuckerberg has courted Trump since he called him a “badass” following the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, last July. Seemingly to align with Trump, the Facebook founder also axed his company’s fact-checking team and diversity, equity and inclusion policies.

As for Musk, he is stepping back from the Trump administration after his electric car company Tesla suffered major losses. Both the billionaire’s net worth and Tesla’s stock price have plunged dramatically in recent months, with the latter’s profits declining 71 percent in the first quarter.

“It’s a tough time to be a tech CEO in Washington, D.C.,” Lowkey told The Hill. “And I think that may come as a little bit of a surprise to some of the CEOs who thought that investing in the relationships with Trump would have a bigger payoff in terms of policy.”