Amazon’s billionaire founder, Jeff Bezos, is the most recent tech mogul to supply a brand new wave of help for Donald Trump’s incoming presidency, endorsing the previous president’s plans to cut back authorities regulation and signalling a willingness to collaborate.
Talking on the New York Occasions’s DealBook Summit on Wednesday, the entrepreneur and Washington Put up proprietor described himself as “very optimistic this time round” about Trump’s financial and tech technique.
“I’m very optimistic that President Trump is critical about this regulatory agenda,” Bezos stated. “If I may help him try this, I’m going to assist him, as a result of we do have an excessive amount of regulation on this nation.”
The intervention marks a dramatic reversal from their beforehand antagonistic relationship. Throughout Trump’s first time period, the previous president repeatedly attacked Bezos, criticising Amazon and the Washington Put up for alleged tax avoidance and biased reporting.
Bezos additionally defended his current controversial choice to stop the Washington Put up from endorsing the Democratic candidate, vice-president Kamala Harris, a transfer that reportedly value the newspaper about 10% of its subscriber base. He described the choice as “removed from cowardly”, arguing that the paper wanted to keep up some type of independence.
This political repositioning additionally comes as different tech leaders, notably X and Tesla’s Elon Musk, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and OpenAI’s Sam Altman, have additionally signalled help for Trump. Musk has contributed almost $75m to a pro-Trump political motion committee and is now set to co-lead the so-called “Division of Authorities Effectivity” meant to slash wasteful authorities spending. Final week, Zuckerberg dined with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago property and is believed to be angling for a spot influencing the incoming president’s tech coverage.
Nonetheless, the tech collaboration between the personal sector and authorities shouldn’t be precisely new. Whereas the Biden administration went after Apple this yr over monopolistic practices, it additionally developed the sweeping 2023 AI govt order that was partially geared in the direction of tech regulation and helped information the Chips Act by means of Congress to change into regulation.
Amazon, Meta and OpenAI are additionally already part of a consortium of tech corporations in a US government-led initiative to handle AI security laws.
As for enterprise relationships, Bezos’s pivot seems strategically motivated, together with his area firm, Blue Origin, doubtlessly positioned to compete for federal contracts in a future Trump administration.
The tech mogul additionally portrayed Trump as having undergone a private metamorphosis, describing him as “calmer, extra assured and extra settled”. He even expressed a want to average Trump’s method to media relations, saying he would try to persuade the previous president that “the press shouldn’t be the enemy”.
“You already know, you’ve most likely grown within the final eight years,” Bezos stated on the occasion. “He has too.”
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