Captured in images that immediately went viral, U.S. President Donald Trump’s second inauguration in January drew the attendance of the chief executives of America’s tech giants, including Google’s Sundar Pichai, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Tesla’s Elon Musk. All vocal critics of Trump in his first term (2017-2021), America’s Big Tech leaders struck a markedly different tone this time round, projecting an image of rapprochement with the incoming administration. President Trump, for his part, is drawn to strong personalities and prefers direct dialogue with government and corporate leaders. The second Trump administration is attempting to reshape the global economy through its reciprocal tariff policies, which the White House sees as a tool to bring manufacturing back to the United States. While Big Tech can sustain revenues from digital services, companies with major hardware operations — such as Apple with its iPhone business — or those with retail exposure like Amazon are likely to see costs rise.