Tech billionaires’ Trump-Vance dance is missing the point: You can’t always get what you want

Republican presidential candidate, former president Donald Trump and Republican vice presidential candidate, Sen. J.D. Vance appear at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on July 15.

Elon Musk’s swift endorsement of President Trump following a failed assassination attempt on Saturday captured plenty of headlines. A recent story by the Wall Street Journal suggests that Musk is doubling down on his commitment to Trump with sizeable contributions to a Trump-aligned super PAC. In standard fashion, Musk labeled the story “fake gnus,” leaving only a meme in the comments of the WSJ’s post on his social media site, X.

As typical with Musk, his actions have reverberated across the media, fueling over-hyped speculation about the former president’s inroads with what has historically been a formidable group of supporters for Democrats: tech titans and venture capitalists.

The trending narratives attempt to connect the mercurial billionaire’s fresh public support for Trump with a marked change in the political leanings of the tech industry, along with others in the billionaire class. “Musk turbocharges Silicon Valley support for Trump”, blared one headline.

Tech elite support is a myth

However, Elon Musk’s support for Donald Trump is hardly surprising. President Biden has repeatedly snubbed the Tesla executive in public. SpaceX’s meteoric rise has only increased its interest in winning more business from the federal government. Trump has led a major charm offensive aimed at the world’s richest man, even pivoting his stance on electric vehicles. One can understand the calculus behind Musk’s decision.

Then, of course, there are the droves of tech elites switching camps to back President Trump. But where is everyone? For every Joe Lonsdale, Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, and Doug Leone, there are twice as many in the Biden camp, such as Alan Patricof, Reid Hoffman, Reed Hastings, and Bill Gates.

Most prominent tech voices are not Trump donors or supporters and have never been, including Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, Satya Nadella, Glenn Hutchins, Ann Winblad, Arvind Krishna, Roger McNamee, and Ruth Porat, just to name a few.

That same sentiment is not limited to the tech titans. A recent analysis found that the top 20 venture capital firms, and their employees, have given about two dollars to Democrats for every dollar to Republicans—above the average of the past 10 election cycles.

Looking into the past, similar trends appear. The level of support for the GOP nominee was not different in 2012 when Mitt Romney was on the ticket, only picking up a few major Silicon Valley backers. The same could likely be said for 2016. As LinkedIn Co-Founder, Reid Hoffman, put it, “There is louder voices [for Trump]…but they were there. They probably voted for Trump last time. They’re voting for Trump again.”

Trump’s tech tensions

Many leaders from tech and other industries are less than enthusiastic about another four years with President Biden, with concerns about regulatory overreach and excessively zealous antitrust enforcement by the insular Biden team.

As disenchanted as they may be, these corporate leaders are not Trump converts. The GOP has historically turned off many in tech due to differences in cultural values on abortion, inclusive hiring practices, and environmental sustainability, among other issues. Now, the new GOP—carefully crafted in the image of Trump—espouses policies on topics such as global trade, antitrust, and immigration that run counter to the tech community’s strategic priorities.

Trump’s promise to slap 10% tariffs on all imports into the U.S, and 60% or more tariffs on China, would likely incite retaliatory tariffs. Such protectionism would deal a major blow to the tech industry. Conservative estimates suggest U.S. technology revenues from international business are over $1 trillion annually, the most of any industry. Some tech giants, such as Google and Microsoft, draw over half their annual sales from markets overseas, amounting to a total of $260 billion.

Silicon Valley also resents Trump’s intrusive meddling and personal targeting of perceived opponents. This year, Trump reversed his opposition to TikTok, in part to spite its primary competitor, Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta. In his own words, “If you get rid of TikTok, Facebook and Zuckerschmuck will double their business…I don’t want Facebook, who cheated in the last election, doing better.”

Vance’s values clash with tech value

Paradoxically, tech leaders who are supporting the Trump-Vance ticket chafe at the Biden administration’s “crackdowns on acquisitions by Big Tech”—but Vance is leading the GOP in supporting more stringent antitrust enforcement. In February, he praised, Commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission Lina Khan, saying: “I look at Lina Khan as one of the few people in the Biden Administration that I think is doing a pretty good job.”

Vance would take federal regulation and oversight even further. Vance recently partnered with progressive colleagues, such as Senator Elizabeth Warren, to introduce bills ranging from the “Stop Subsidizing Giant Mergers Act” to others that would break up big firms. Such policies surpass the antitrust regime of the Biden administration, threatening to debilitate the venture capital industry, which is reliant on M&A to exit investments.

On immigration, Vance has largely followed on Trump’s heels, taking hardline stances against immigration. Trump has already previewed his intentions in a second term, calling for the “largest domestic deportation operation in American history” and ending birthright citizenship.

Vance, erroneously attempted to educate the American public about labor economics and illegal immigration, claiming “much of the job growth from the Biden administration has gone to the foreign-born,” despite a U.S. labor market at full employment and data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics noting most employment gains since 2018 have gone to naturalized U.S. citizens and legal residents. Ironically, even Vance’s own in-laws would not have been able to get into the U.S. if his stances were law. The tech industry is uniquely reliant upon skilled immigrants; a quarter of all billion-dollar startups in the U.S. were founded by immigrants, as well as two-thirds of all AI companies.

Four years ago, the Rolling Stones and music publisher BMI sent a cease and desist warning to the Trump campaign demanding it stop booming their song You Can’t Always Get What You Want at rallies. Perhaps now, the tech community should listen to Mick Jagger’s words from the song and recognize this was one of the few times when Trump offered truth in his advertising.

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