Trump Wins. What's Next for Tech and The Economy? — With Dan Primack and Ana Swanson

Ana Swanson is a reporter covering trade and international economics for The New York Times. Dan Primack is the business editor at Axios. The two join to discuss the implications of Trump's win in the 2024 election. We cover: 1) Trump's decisive win 2) Why he won 3) Will his policies deliver for his voters? 4) No tax on tips, overtime, or social security 5) Will Trump's tariff threats become reality? 6) US-China relations and semiconductor industry impacts 7) Tech antitrust future with Lina Khan likely out as FTC chair 8) Trump's silence on AI regulation 9) Federal Reserve independence under Trump 10) Elon Musk's influence in new administration 11) The proposed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) 12) Tesla and EV industry outlook 13) Bull and bear cases for Trump economy. --- Enjoying Big Technology Podcast? Please rate us five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcast app of choice. For weekly updates on the show, sign up for the pod newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/6901970121829801984/ Want a discount for Big Technology on Substack? Here’s 40% off for the first year: https://tinyurl.com/bigtechnology Questions? Feedback? Write to: [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  After Donald Trump's decisive victory in the US presidential election, we'll break down what it means for tech, the economy, and the world. That's coming up right after this. This episode is brought to you by Genesis. What does it actually take to put Agentic AI to work across an entire enterprise? I recently spoke with Genesis chairman and CEO Tony Bates about why orchestration is emerging as a competitive advantage in customer experience and what companies need to get right in the AI era. Then I sat down with Adam Mitchell, head of enterprise business solutions at Voya Financial, to go inside a large-scale Agentic CX transformation, including the business decisions, trade-offs, and lessons along the way. You can watch both conversations now on my YouTube channel today.

• 0:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's never been more challenging to get frontier compute. How do you know where to look, who to trust, or how much to pay? Akash is an open cloud that provides easy access, flexibility, and peace of mind. That's how companies like Razer were able to cut their inference costs by 15 times. Visit akash.network/alex for a free consultation. That's akash.network/alex for a free consultation. Welcome to Big Technology Podcast Bonus Edition. We're here talking the morning after the election. We didn't think we would have a winner at this point, but we do. Donald Trump has won decisively, and we're going to talk about what it means for the economy, for tech, and for trade moving forward. We're joined today by two great guests.

• 1:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  Anna Swanson is here. She's a reporter covering trade and international economics for The New York Times. Anna, welcome.

• 1:37Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me.

• 1:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  And we're also joined by Dan Primack, the business editor at Axios, who has been here for the day after Sam Altman was fired, the day that Silicon Valley Bank imploded, and now the day after the election. So, Dan, you're our go-to on big news. Great to see you again. Thanks for being here. Good to be here. Okay, let's talk quickly about what exactly happened last night. Just setting the scene, Trump has been declared the victor by basically everyone. He has 277 electoral votes already, according to the New York Times. That number will go up. The Republicans also won the Senate, flipping three seats already, and they have a great shot to win the House. So, so much for gridlock. It's looking like it's going to be a Republican sweep.

• 2:23Alex Kantrowitz?

  And I'll just say personally, at the very beginning of the night, CNN had an exit poll that showed a 20-point swing toward Trump among independents in Georgia. That came up at like 7:30 PM Eastern, and as soon as that happened, it was like, pretty clear that it was going to be a win for Trump, and now we have it. So, I think that this election turned on two issues, really. And I welcome pushback from the guests, but I think the economy, and by that is really inflation and immigration. That's kind of where I think this election turned. So, I want to go to you, Anna and Dan. What's your read on what happened in the election?

• 3:03Speaker 02

  Sure. Yeah, no, look, inflation clearly was a massive factor here, because when you look at the exit polling and how Trump gained kind of across demographic, right? Across geography and across demographic. One thing that kind of everybody shares in common throughout the entire country is that they are all paying more for groceries. We all get food, we all are paying more for it. And even though the economy by almost all objective standards has been very good under the Biden administration in terms of job growth, in terms of GDP growth, et cetera, and in some ways better than it was for Trump pre-COVID. You know, that sticker shock clearly was on a lot of people's minds and was something that Harris was unable to overcome. Now, Trump never really explained how he was going to change that.

• 3:46Speaker 02

  And I've heard some people suggest this idea that, well, prices will now go back down to where they were four years ago, which would be disinflation, which I don't think any economist thinks is a particularly good idea. And Anna can speak much better to this, but kind of where Trump is going, at least with what he said on the campaign trail in terms of tariffs. There is a general economic consensus that that will simply lead to more perhaps heightened inflation, whereas right now it has been going down over the past year.

• 4:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, and we're going to get to that right away. But Anna, first of all, your broad thoughts on what happened.

• 4:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, so definitely. So when I started seeing the results, I immediately just kind of read this as, you know, oh, this is really the rejection of an incumbent party. I mean, people are not, you know, happy with the way the economy has been going. And it's a little bit ironic because on paper, as Dan was saying, the economy looks pretty good. I mean, growth is really strong. Inflation has come back down. You know, there are a lot of metrics where the US economy is ticking along pretty well, especially compared to the rest of the world. But, you know, inflation, the experience that people have is not, you know, based on sort of the year-over-year rise in inflation. It's just that prices are much

• 5:01Speaker 01

  higher than they had been. And I also think there's kind of this sense of, you know, uncertainty, general uncertainty with the world, with the US economy, you know, certain groups that are just not seeing the kind of progress and the growth that they did before. And I think, you know, Donald Trump had a very appealing message for a lot of those people. He provides a lot of like very simple answers, you know, in terms of I'm going to solve this through taking a tough approach to other countries on trade or on immigration, you know, whether or not those can really translate into economic policy proposals and whether they're so accomplished with what he says they will. I think you

• 5:44Speaker 01

  need to have a lot of skepticism there. But, you know, clearly, people just were not happy with the direction that the country has been going. And that's mostly what that answer was about for me.

• 5:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yes. And so we're going to get into some of these solutions, especially trade. We've been talking about that a lot on the show lately. But let's just go broad again and think about sort of what Trump might deliver to his voters who, I mean, I totally agree that they're feeling this. I mean, we're all feeling the impact of inflation, even if it's tailed off. You know, let's say it's at 2% now. Well, you add that to the 8% last year and prices are 10% higher, almost across the board. And so now I'm wondering how Trump, who's been elected basically as an agent of disruption, trying to break that system, break the incumbency, is going to deliver. And especially for the working class voters who came behind him. I think they were talking about, one commentator on CNN talked about how it's the revenge of the working class.

• 6:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  And so let's talk a little bit about the policies here. So today, the immediate reaction is the stock market's going up, right? The S and P 500 is up almost 2%. It seems like Trump is going to extend his tax cuts, which helped, I believe, the super rich. So I'm curious, Dan, from your perspective, how is Trump going to deliver for his voters?

• 7:01Speaker 02

  Well, first, yes, his tax cuts did help the super rich. They helped others too, but they primarily, you know, on percentage helped the super rich. You know, one thing which is a huge outstanding caveat right now, it looks like Republicans have a very good chance of maintaining the House, but that's not determined yet. We still have a bunch of races, particularly in the West, California, Washington State, that we don't know yet. And when it comes to anything in terms of tax policy, not tariffs, which somehow Congress has kind of offloaded to the executive, but when it comes to actual tax rates and for corporations or for individuals, Trump needs Congress for that. And if Democrats, even by one or two votes, can maintain that, or not maintain, can take the House, then kind of all bets are off in terms of tax policy. But what Trump wants to do, particularly if he has both houses of Congress, he wants

• 7:44Speaker 02

  to further lower the corporate tax rate, which he already lowered in 2017. He hasn't said too much about individual rates, but he has kind of done, he had a remarkable campaign of basically offering everyone a tax cut, right? No more taxes on social security benefits, no more taxes on tips, no more taxes on overtime. Honestly, if he thought journalists were a good enough voting bloc, he probably would have said no taxes on journalists, like if we could have delivered some votes somewhere that mattered to him.

• 8:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  I don't think we were his target demographic.

• 8:09Speaker 02

  Right. So I mean, so the question I think really becomes, and I think I already know the answer, but the question really becomes... Does Congress care at all about fiscal responsibility on any of this? Or do they not? My guess is they do not, based on basically past history, at least GOP Congress past history. But the question is usually, what will be the pay for? There's already been some talk, some of those pay for's could be rescinding parts of the IRA, could be rescinding parts of the CHIPS Act, or completely eviscerating the CHIPS Act. But that's, but he is promising, he's promising lower taxes kind of across the board. And again, including for corporations. As for the stock market going up, it is, that is, I think, more reaction to knowing the idea that you now know who's going to be the president. Remember, it went up after Trump was elected in 16.

• 8:53Speaker 02

  It went up after Biden was elected in 20.

• 8:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right, Dan, I mean, the stock market does go up after elections, but one, because it has the certainty, that's typically the behavior. But one of the things it likes is gridlock. So how do you read the fact that the S and P 500 is going up the way it is? And it looks like the Republicans are probably going to sweep.

• 9:13Speaker 02

  I mean, the S and P 500 has been going up for two years. You know, it went up two years ago before anyone even knew that Trump would be the nominee, let alone that Harris was going to be the nominee. It went up for most of this year. The S and P, we're in the midst of a massive bull market, which again, goes back to the original point about the economy. And admittedly, the stock market is not the economy. They are not, they are not synonyms. But the markets have been going up because the US economy, particularly as Anna said, compared to the globe, is really strong and has been, which I'm sure is causing people to pull their hair out at the White House right now.

• 9:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And let's talk a little bit about some of these taxes. So Dan brought up the fact that they are going, that Trump is planning to or talking about rescinding taxes on tips, rescinding taxes on overtime, and rescinding taxes on social security. What do you think about whether those plans are going to go through? The feasibility of those plans? And actually, like, the question I asked of like, whether he can deliver for the working class voters, it seems like if he pushes those through, he might.

• 10:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So these are really interesting policy proposals that he kind of, you know, picked up, it seemed like really in response to, um, you know, politics, something that somebody would suggest to him at a certain time. And he was like, oh, yeah, that's a good idea, right? Um, very appealing to a certain voting block. But that's kind of the way he makes policy, you know, he just sort of like crowd tests policy and sees what's popular and then turns to lawyers and the question of politics to see if it can actually practically be done in Washington. Um, and I, I think so on these specific taxes on tips over time, social security. I hit up a colleague of mine, Andy Durand, who

• 10:54Speaker 01

  covers tax for us and got his kind of expert opinion on it. Um, and he was saying he thinks it's kind of an open question. So even if Republicans keep the House and have this trifecta powers of leadership in Washington, because those ideas are really expensive. Um, and lawmakers are already trying to figure out how to afford the extension of the 2017 tax cuts that Trump signed when he was last in office. That's going to be a major task for this next administration. Um, so, you know, I think the expense of those is a big issue. And some of Trump's advisors apparently already looking at ways to scale back, um, some of these campaign promises

• 11:35Speaker 01

  and make them more targeted. Um, and as Dan was saying, a lot of this really hinges on uh, whether or not Republicans have control of the House as well. If Democrats have uh, control of the House, I think they have the ability to block more of these tax proposals than otherwise.

• 11:53Speaker 02

  Can I, Alex, and let me add one more. I forgot. There was one more also. He, Trump uh, flip flopped on his own salt uh, cap, which is the, which is the tax uh, that mainly hits people in high tax states, particularly in the Northeast, uh, on property owners uh, in those places. That was something that was put in as part of his 2017 tax cut to pay for it. During the campaign, Trump basically said, we don't need that anymore. So it, again, there's a lot of questions about how Congress is going to figure all of this out, no matter who runs it.

• 12:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  Definitely. And I'm thinking about like just the bare bones of the policies. If there's no tax on tips, I'm just going to be demanding to pay, be paid in tips from now on and not take any other type of salary or payment. Uh, Dan, I'm curious if you think the, the discussion about Harris and Biden. Being interested in taxing unrealized gains played into this at all? Or was that sort of just a Wall Street thing that was confined to those type of folks?

• 12:47Speaker 02

  Well, first I agree with you, Alex, and I assume all of our Venmos will be included on this podcast. On somewhere that people can just tip us. Please tip.

• 12:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  After January 20th, 2025. Thank you.

• 12:55Speaker 02

  The unrealized capital gains thing, so this was something that became such a large deal, particularly on Twitter slash X, and wasn't such a real deal in big life, or such a big deal in real life, even if Harris had gotten through and even if she had gotten it passed. Which, again, this was originally a proposal in a Biden budget proposal. Nothing that became law, nothing the White House really fought for. And it was specifically on very, very wealthy people. You had, I think it was a hundred million dollars in liquid assets, or if not liquid assets, I'm sorry. You had to have about a hundred million dollars in assets, not including, say, real estate. So it was going to impact a very small number of people. It, there was a lot of carve outs and exemptions if you had illiquid securities. So if you were a startup founder and your stuff didn't trade, you kind of got pushed out and didn't necessarily have to pay it.

• 13:40Speaker 02

  Did it have an impact? I think it had an impact because it, how can I say this? I think it mobilized certain very wealthy people, particularly some venture capitalists, who this probably would have impacted. And I think it got, I think got misstated. I think a lot of people looked and said, wait a minute. If I have a stock portfolio and I have, you know, $10,000 in the stock market and it goes up $1,000 next year, am I going to have to pay for that? And that nuance, which wasn't even really nuanced, it was just the basic facts, that got lost in a lot of stuff I saw and read. It was simply, you're going to get taxed on unrealized gains, period. And I think understandably, that freaked a lot of people out. And the Harris campaign did a lousy job responding to it because they simply didn't respond to it.

• 14:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  One last tax question before we move on. Do either of you have any thoughts about whether the, what the fallout will be or the impact of the Trump tax cuts being extended? Because it seems like once he's in office, he'll extend these cuts.

• 14:33Speaker 01

  I mean, I think it creates, you know, really big, long-term questions for US debt and the deficit, right? So, you know, we've been having these fights over deficit and budget limits in Washington. And a lot of President Trump's proposals are just really, really expensive, right? And the tax cuts are the prime example of that, but there are others that are really expensive as well. And the question is just, you know, how long are other countries going to continue to want to buy our debt, service our debt? You know, the US economy still looks like the strongest economy in the world and a real safe haven for assets.

• 15:15Speaker 01

  But as we continue to run that up, that debt up, you know, will that situation begin to change? So I think there are some serious, long-term considerations with that.

• 15:28Speaker 02

  It's also worth noting, Trump, in his 2016 campaign against Hillary Clinton, he pledged that he was going to literally eliminate the national debt within eight years. He said that. Now, he exploded the debt, again, pre-COVID spending, which pushed it even higher. And ultimately, he's a debt guy. He's a real estate developer. Real estate development is all debt, all the time. I mean, so I think that despite his promise, which obviously was a silly promise and I'm fulfilled, like, I don't think that when you think of debt hawks in DC, Trump is ever going to be one of them. He built his entire career on debt.

• 16:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. So I know it's supposed to be disconnected, but explain to me how the dollar is strengthening after we're going to see all this spending. Anna, what do you think?

• 16:08Speaker 01

  Well, I do know the dollar dynamics when it comes to trade. So, I mean, I think the implications for trade is that, you know, if Trump is launching various tariff wars, then you have other currencies that are falling against the dollar and making the dollar stronger. Maybe I'll let Dan tackle some of the other aspects of the dollar, but there are actually...

• 16:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's a good explanation.

• 16:39Speaker 01

  There are actually some interesting...

• 16:42Speaker 01

  You know, there are some interesting differences between how the Trump team sees the interaction between the dollar and trade and how economists actually see it. So I have some question marks actually for what their attitude is going to be toward a strong US dollar and what they might try to do about it.

• 17:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  Wait, can you explain the differences between the Trump team and economists on that? It seems like an important issue.

• 17:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, definitely. Yeah, no, I think this is a really interesting issue. So economists generally assume that when you impose a bunch of tariffs on foreign products, that makes those foreign products more expensive, it reduces demand for foreign currency, and it strengthens the US dollar. The Trump team doesn't think that that is the case. They don't think that that has been true historically. And in his book, Robert Lighthizer, who's kind of the chief architect of Trump's trade policy, actually proposes imposing a universal tariff on foreign goods to kind of equal out, you know, equalize the effects of a US dollar that is even too strong.

• 17:53Speaker 01

  So I think there's kind of a lot of contradictory views about currency there that are really interesting. They really want the US dollar to be the reserve currency, but they think that having a strong dollar is a problem for US trade and US trade deficits. So it seems like there are a lot of other contenders to be the Treasury Secretary that might, you know, be more likely than Robert Lighthizer, but he is a name that's kind of floated in that group. And so for me, that raises really interesting questions about what they might want to do about currency and the dollar.

• 18:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  And Dan, you've been writing about, we're not really sure what Trump is going to do. It's sort of like he will skate to the puck effectively, based off of what is most convenient. He has promised big tariffs, and we're going to get to the implications of if he implements them with Anna in a moment. But do you think he's going to implement these tariffs? I mean, 20% across the board, 60% from China, or do you think it's more of a negotiation ploy?

• 18:51Speaker 02

  I think it's probably more of a negotiation play. Look, he did, he didn't, he did put some tariffs on when he was in the White House, but much more limited than what he's been talking about on the campaign trail. I think, I kind of think it's both. Like, I don't believe that Trump, and this kind of goes across a lot of things, really has hard and fast political philosophies or principles outside of figuring out how to win. And in this case tariffs seemed to, from his perspective, be a way to help how to win. It helped kind of, in his mind, offset all the tax cuts he was offering. But ultimately, I think, you know, he doesn't really have anything deep, deep inside. He also does believe tariffs are a solution because he really believes they punish other countries, even though most, anyone who looks at them believe they punish

• 19:36Speaker 02

  the people ultimately who are buying the products.

• 19:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, so Anna, I'm curious what you think about that. Do you think that there's more will within the Trump camp to implement the tariffs? I mean, you've written about it. He said tariff is the most beautiful word in the world. It's more beautiful than love, more beautiful than respect, which we know he values both of those very much. So I'm curious what your read is on the tariff situation.

• 19:58Speaker 01

  I guess I would, yeah, kind of like respectfully debate that a little bit. I mean, I do think that tariffs are kind of a long-held core value for him. Like, there's something that he's talked about for decades, since, you know, looking at Japan in the 90s. He's talked about tariffs as a tool. I think they're just really core to his economic philosophy. And yes, he's found that, like, they are a useful political tagline, too. So he's probably kind of exaggerating what he would do in his rallies to kind of rile people up. And his campaign has proposed a bunch of different things. Again, he's kind of like floating and crowd-testing ideas and then going to take those back and see what works. But he's

• 20:42Speaker 01

  proposed a 60% tariff on China, 10 to 20% tariff on all, you know, most foreign products.

• 20:50Speaker 01

  Tariffs of, you know, hundred, two hundred percent or more on products from Mexico. They've talked about making tariffs reciprocal with other countries, removing permanent normal trading relations for China. So there are a lot of different policies out there. Do I think all of those are going to happen? No, but I do expect that they will try to do some of those. And I think, you know, there's just sort of growing support in Washington for the idea of something like removing permanent normal trading relations with China, which would increase China tariffs. There's also a lot of dissatisfaction in the Trump camp with the way that putting tariffs

• 21:30Speaker 01

  on China has kind of been like a whack-a-mole case that has forced businesses into other low-cost countries like Vietnam and Mexico. And now we see trade deficits surging from those countries. They're, you know, not very happy about that. So hence this idea of a universal tariff on everybody. So it is definitely something that I take quite seriously. And as Dan mentioned earlier, you know, the executive also has a lot of authority to level tariffs. I don't know, you know, exactly which they're going to do, but I think he clearly does see them as a very powerful tool, a tool he likes to use, not only in terms of its economic sense, but also in negotiations.

• 22:15Speaker 01

  My first thought when I woke up this morning actually was, I wish I would have taken a vacation while I had the chance because I think I'm going to be pretty busy. Yeah.

• 22:23Speaker 02

  When I say this, I guess what I mean, yes, he's talked about it for a long time, but he has consistently, at least since his time in the White House, he's consistently misunderstood, or at least misstated publicly, how tariffs work. And this hasn't been a one-off thing that he screwed up in a press conference or that he corrected later. He's repeated it over and over and over again. This idea that, for example, if you put a tariff on, I don't know, Chinese aluminum, that the Chinese government sends the US Treasury a check every time somebody in the US buys aluminum from China. It's not how tariffs work. And so I struggle with this concept of how deeply he really believes in something when he so fundamentally misunderstands how they work.

• 23:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  He also talks about it as like a negotiation tool. Like I think listening to his rallies and his appearances on podcasts, the thing that he's most proud of with tariff is saying to companies, if you do build a manufacturing plant somewhere else, you're going to get my tariff. So you better build here and we'll see. I mean, that will obviously continue. It was a feature of his of his first term. But you know, what's interesting is that we've been talking about tariffs on the show as a theoretical thing. And now it's, you know, it's clear that Trump has won and he's going to have a lot of leeway to do what he wants. And we're starting to see the reaction play out in the stock market. And that to me has been kind of interesting because there are some movements

• 23:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  that I'm not fully understanding. And maybe we can talk about them here. So I mentioned before that the S and P 500 is up today, you know, significantly on the news. And Nvidia is actually outperforming. So Nvidia, which relies on Taiwan semiconductors to to make the to make the chips that it designs. Nvidia is up 2.5%. But TSMC is down 3%. Dan, do you think the stock market is just like, all right, well, they'll be making them in the US? Or can you explain that movement at all?

• 24:21Speaker 02

  No, because I can never really explain a one day move in the stock market unless there's something material company like, look, US Steel stock, at least as of pre-market was way up. Trump has said he opposes the takeover of US Steel by Japan's Nippon. US Steel is a disaster of a company if it doesn't get acquired. Like, the only reason the stock was trading where it was, was because most investors thought the deal would go through. So I don't, I think you've got short term paint fume highs from a lot of people right now from the certainty. And I think you just need to wait a couple of days. And look, if that if that kind of untethering between those two companies continues, then I think it's something to read into. Right now, I think we're just so early. We're a few hours into this at this point. Like, let's wait and see how this plays out. Yeah.

• 25:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  Anna, what do you think about the US reliance on TSMC? And I mean, the Biden administration was already planning to put double the tariff from 25 to 50% on semiconductors. And Professor Deardorff and I on Wednesday, on Tuesday, no, we released it Monday, we were talking about how like, maybe near term, there's no real big difference between Harris and Trump, but long term, could you end up in a situation where like, the US and China really sort of go at it from a trade perspective, that it leads to some risk of China intervening in Taiwan, and then you see the problems. So you've been reporting on this pretty deeply. What's your, what's your read on the semiconductor situation, now that we know that Trump is going to be in office?

• 25:42Speaker 01

  I would say first, like, just the idea of like doubling those tariffs, you mentioned Biden doubling the tariffs. I don't think that that actually really does much of anything, because it's just, it's just on semiconductors that are imported directly into the United States, not on chips that are imported into the United States as part of other things. And the US, you know, basically doesn't import that many single chips. Those chips go into supply chains in Asia that are made into other things. So that tariff, I think, was kind of, you know, more for show. People do talk about the idea of putting some kind of like component tariff on chips, where if you import an electronic with a China, Chinese chip in it, you could still

• 26:24Speaker 01

  hit that with a tariff, but we're not doing that right now. But on, on that bigger question of Taiwan, I mean, it's a really interesting one. So Trump has made some remarks, you know, earlier this summer, and then again, recently, really calling into question US support for Taiwan, saying that, you know, they should pay their own way. But I think it's also, when it, when it comes to China, like, he's just really very erratic. I mean, the other quote that I really liked is that, you know, he said something about Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader, would not challenge him, because he knows I'm effing crazy. So I think that tells you.

• 27:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's a good chunk of Trump foreign policy.

• 27:08Speaker 01

  Yes, I think that tells you like, you know, a lot of what you need to know about Trump foreign policy. I mean, so I covered the US-China trade war during the first Trump administration. It was just this really like bewildering mix of people with different policy perspectives. You know, President Trump like sometimes being very tough on China, but also like extremely transactional, willing to kind of trade things in order to make business gains, you know, watching out for Wall Street buddies. So there's just a lot of things kind of going into the mix when it comes to China. I do think like both he and Washington in general are more

• 27:47Speaker 01

  hawkish on China than they were eight years ago. You know, so you could see, you know, I really think that there's sort of an open question of will we see some kind of like, you know, conflagration or with China in the next four years. I mean, I think that that is a really big risk. You know, a trade war where China could put tariffs on American products or cut off certain critical supply chains where we depend on China for. So there's just a lot of like X factors and uncertainty there for me. And that's one of the things I think I'm going to be most focused on.

• 28:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  Dan, I've been huffing the paint fumes of the market this morning. Meta is the one company that's down among the tech giants. Anything you can read into that?

• 28:35Speaker 02

  I will go back to my old one prior opinion. No, it's too early. No, I mean, like, look, Trump has antipathy toward big tech. Like, we know that. When I say that, I mean, you know, Silicon Valley, big tech, Meta, Google, et cetera. But no, it's fricking early. Who knows?

• 28:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay. I want to talk about the fact that Jerome Powell is likely going to be replaced at the Federal Reserve. You know, Khan likely isn't going to be the commissioner of the FTC anymore. And whether these policies will increase inflation and of course. How Elon might be feeling today. So we'll do that right after this. This episode is brought to you by Avpoint. Everyone's racing to roll out AI right now. Copilots, chatbots, agents doing real work. But here's the part nobody loves talking about. All that AI runs on your data and most teams have no single way to see it, secure it and prove it's under control. That's exactly what Avpoint does. For 25 years, they've been the trusted layer beneath the world's most demanding data,

• 29:32Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 30:14Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 30:55Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 31:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast with Anna Swanson. She's a reporter covering trade and international economics for the New York Times and Dan Primack, the business editor at Axios. Okay, so Dan, first of all, with Lena Kahn, she's probably not going to be the commissioner anymore. What do you think that means for this large moment of big tech antitrust?

• 31:28Speaker 02

  Well, let's start with the probably part. One thing that's interesting about this is that J.D. Vance is a fan of Lena Kahn. He is, always has been. And so I assume she won't be renominated as FTC Chair, although you don't even have to renominate her. She just kind of gets to sit there until someone gets nominated. So she'll be there for a bit.

• 31:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 31:49Speaker 02

  Unless she quits. So but if she's not, if it's not Lena Kahn, yeah, I mean, look, Trump is a, Trump is a fan of big business, by which I mean like big conglomerates. He, Trump has always been a bigger is better sort of person. And there's been some exceptions, right? He tried to block the AT&T Time Warner merger. But generally, he did not stand in the way too often of major mergers while he was in office. I would assume he probably would not do that again with, again, with some particular exceptions, like the, the AT&T Time Warner thing was really him being pissed off at CNN, it seems, is really why he tried to stop that one potentially. And, and you know, you mentioned Meta being down before the break. It's possible he would have problems if Google or Meta or one of those companies tried to do something that got significantly bigger.

• 32:32Speaker 02

  But the reality is, the FTC and, and Biden's DOJ have been very tough on mergers, not just in tech, kind of across the board. It's been true in healthcare. It's been true in transportation. It's been true in a lot of things. A lot more of these deals are going to get to go through, which could be a real bailout for, for a lot of venture capitalists, particularly in Silicon Valley, who have been unable, who've been, who've been unwilling to put their companies in the public market, really out of cowardice, and have been unable to sell them to big tech because big tech has slowed down its buying appetite because it hasn't wanted to get caught up in, in regulatory troubles.

• 33:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  Then you and I have also been talking about the fact that the administration has said, that Trump has said nothing about AI. So where do you think they go on AI?

• 33:18Speaker 02

  I mean, I think that's the trillion dollar question, right? If you believe, and I do, and I think a lot of people do, that AI is kind of the driving tech and maybe economic force during the next several years, i.e. during Trump's term in office, he hasn't said much about it in terms of any sort of, whether that be regulation, whether that's in terms of kind of energy. I mean, you saw Amazon get knocked down the other day by the FERC in terms of wanting to put some nuclear power. Does Trump, you know, overrule that? He hasn't said much about this incredibly important topic. It did not get raised during the one debate that Harris and Trump had. It didn't get raised during the Biden-Trump debate either. And so I think that's this huge outstanding question, what he feels about this, if he cares about this. I mean, we talked about this as kind of a working

• 34:02Speaker 02

  class revolution election. Generally speaking, both the working class and white collar workers are both scared about AI in terms of job replacement, but he's been silent on it. So I think it's unclear who's going to get to determine that policy. Maybe that is Elon, which is also interesting, since kind of America's leading privately held AI company is one that Elon is endlessly in litigation with.

• 34:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And he has an AI company of his own, XAI, and he's spending a lot of money there. So it's one of those things where like, AI, if it can continue on its path unencumbered, or it can get hit with massive regulation, that could basically stop the progress in its tracks. And every possibility in between.

• 34:44Speaker 02

  And also, and also, and this also goes back to the antitrust thing to a certain extent. One thing Lina Khan has done over the past couple of months is she's been looking at these big partnership deals that companies like OpenAI and Anthropic have been signing with companies like Microsoft and Amazon to determine, even though they've been investments and arguably kind of investments in kind, rather usually than cash, it's been compute power, you know, are there potential antitrust or anti-competitive issues with those agreements? We'll see who runs the FTC and if they pick that ball up.

• 35:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  You know, what's interesting about our economy right now is that it's kind of rip roaring and it's even though a lot of people are feeling the impact of inflation, like the inflation has gotten down to the point where the market is in really good shape. The Federal Reserve has begun lowering rates. And one of the things that I wonder if we do end up seeing some tariffs is like, is inflation just going to come right back? And I'm curious if that's something that you think is a possibility.

• 35:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I do think that, you know, Trump's agenda is that he proposed in the campaign trail seemed very inflationary, you know, and tariffs were kind of one component of that. I mean, I think the other key thing to bring up with the Fed and inflation is that he's also, you know, repeatedly questioned the independence of the central bank and said that, you know, he should have a greater say in setting rates. And so, you know, does that undermine the Fed's ability also to raise rates and keep inflation down going forward? You know, it's not clear whether he actually has the legal authority to do

• 36:20Speaker 01

  that, or, you know, what's going to happen to Powell. But Trump does have an economic advisor, Scott Besant, who has proposed, you know, a way to effectively kind of appoint a shadow chair to the Fed that could kind of undercut Powell's authority. So, you know, I think not only the economic policies that he's proposing are inflationary, but you have to think about what he would do at the Federal Reserve as well, and whether that could have an impact on inflation.

• 36:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  Dan, what do you think about the state of the Federal Reserve? Are they going to have to raise rates again if tariffs get put into place? Who might replace Jay Powell? What's your thought on that?

• 37:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think what Anna said is the big question here is how much of a direct say does Trump try to have, which would be a break with, you know, every president of our lifetimes, right, in terms of monetary policy? They don't have a say. They have a say in terms of who they nominate to chair the Fed, but after that, they're supposed to stay away and historically have stayed away. If Trump wants to have a greater say, what The reason why it really matters is the Fed is supposed to be politically independent for the sake of not making its decisions for short-term political gain, whether that be raising rates, dropping rates, and you know, it's always supposed to be balancing inflation and labor and job market. If Trump, for whatever reason, does start to have some sort of say and decides that, you know, he wants to put in these tariffs and they're inflationary, thus he has to

• 37:44Speaker 02

  offset that, not with something in Congress or not with another policy, but he has to offset that by changing rates at the Fed. It opens up this massive can of worms, and I don't think any of us really know where that would end and also how that would impact jobs. Because I said, the inflation-labor balance is the Fed's job, and if Trump decides he needs to play with one of those, it could be at the expense of the other.

• 38:06Speaker 01

  It's not just the tariffs that are inflationary. I think it's also, you know, tax cuts, deficit spending, also like the immigration plans. If he goes through with actually deporting, you know, tons and tons of people who are workers, economists say that that would push wages up, you know, immediately could lead to shortages. So there are a lot of different aspects that kind of feed into that inflationary picture as well.

• 38:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, can I just add to that, like, with what you said, like, one of the, one of the big drivers of the big inflation, kind of the post-pandemic inflation, were supply chain disruptions, right? Like, there was a lot, there was extra spending, there was a lot, but supply chain disruptions. But when we thought about those, most of the, or a lot of those, were, were kind of stuff coming in from overseas and literal disruptions, either because factories were closed in China or other places, there was problems at the ports, et cetera, less if it was domestic. If you do have these massive deportations, you could have supply chain problems which drive inflation, but they could be domestic supply chain problems, you know, stuff, factories in the US just not able to operate at capacity, farms in the US not able to operate at capacity, and that's your product shortages could be domestic, or primarily domestic.

• 39:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, I think maybe what we need to combat all this inflation is a government agency that looks at efficiency. You might call it the Department of Government Efficiency, call it DOGE, call it what you want. But it seems like on that note, that would be the department that Elon Musk would chair. On that note, Elon Musk is going to be pretty influential in this next administration. It seems like his purchase of Twitter was in some ways a success if it helped, if it helped this outcome for him. So Dan, I'm curious what you think we can sort of think about Elon the morning after. And was Twitter,

• 39:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  in your opinion, a good buy? Do you think that he's going to actually be influential in this next administration? What do we think about when it comes to Elon? Because Tesla right now, I mean, it's just one number, but it's up 12% today.

• 40:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. And then look, and a lot of people believe that with the Trump administration, SpaceX will be able to get even more contracts than it already currently has federal contracts than it already has. I mean, look, was Twitter a good investment for Elon's influence? Yes. So for call it Elon Inc. or the Elon conglomerate, sure. If you were a lot of the folks who helped put in tens of billions of dollars to help Elon buy Twitter, including firms, you know, including a lot of venture capital firms, including Fidelity, other hedge funds, no, they're all, you know, down 70 something percent, at least on paper on this. It was a disaster for them. Because even if Tesla does very well and SpaceX does very well and Elon gets his ego stroked even more, that doesn't help you when you're what you have is stock in Twitter or X. Um, you know, will he be influential? I mean, he will be

• 40:49Speaker 02

  influential. I predicted today on X, and I'll stick to this, that there will be a massive falling out between these two before the four years is up. Because, I mean, you have two, let's just say two narcissists, and two narcissists don't want to both be the main character for four years. Something has to give at some point. Ultimately, Trump has much more power than Elon Musk does, because he'll be physically in the White House.

• 41:11Speaker 02

  But you know, this office of government efficiency, first, it's interesting to watch Tesla be up so much today, given that in theory, that should be a busy job, right? Like, I know that this is a man who apparently can be CEO of an unlimited number of companies and have an unlimited number of jobs, but at some point, something has to give. Secondly, when Elon has talked about this, he's talked about, I think he talked about removing $2 trillion annually from the US budget. That is more, I believe, than there is discretionary spending in the annual US budget. I think I'm right about that. So I don't believe he's going to hit the numbers he thinks he's going to hit, which like lots of things when it comes to Elon goes to how much does he actually understand what he is saying when it's outside of his direct wheelhouse.

• 41:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  Anna, what do you think about the Doge, as they call it?

• 41:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So I don't cover that many aspects of Elon Musk. I mean, some of it. But one, one thing that I'm kind of thinking about today is what happens with Donald Trump's policies toward China and will Elon Musk be any kind of influence on that? Because, you know, obviously Tesla's business, Elon Musk's business is really wrapped up in, in China and in interests there. You know, so I wonder if he could be kind of a moderating influence. I mean, he's met, Musk has met with senior Chinese officials on various occasions. So that's one thing that I may be watching.

• 42:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  That is fascinating, because Tesla, a lot of Tesla production happens in China. I don't think Elon Musk wants the US and China to be at each other's necks, and especially not in a sort of spiraling trade war.

• 42:52Speaker 02

  He's, he's in a tricky spot with Tesla with that, right? Because you say he manufactures a lot there. We believe he sells a lot there. They don't break it out. So you don't know how many cars in China versus cars in the US. The tricky part is what he does want is probably continuation of this new Biden policy, which is basically stopping low-cost EVs from coming to the US, right? That, he wants that because that's good for Tesla, right? If you don't have a bunch of $20,000, pretty decent EVs showing up here. And but on the other hand, as Anna said, he doesn't want it going reciprocally. He wants to continue being able to sell easily and manufacture easily in China. And then he also does want tariff stuff going on with Mexico because he wants Detroit, who wants to make some EVs in Mexico, have a hard time getting those cars into the United States. So he's he's he's got a kind of a chessboard and it's clear the way he wants to do it.

• 43:36Speaker 02

  Whether he can actually navigate all that with Trump is to be said.

• 43:40Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 43:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I wonder if China will see that as a lever, though, because, you know, I mean, China is the source of almost all of the world's critical minerals and car batteries. I mean, there's just an incredible lock on that upstream EV supply chain from China. So that could be a really powerful lever if we get into some kind of trade war situation.

• 44:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  I'm just looking at the Rivian stock right now, and let's see what it is. Down, Rivian's down 9.8% today.

• 44:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, it looks like BYD is down as well and CATL.

• 44:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  So the market is basically saying that Elon is is going to be a big winner here.

• 44:21Speaker 02

  Well, he should be, right? I mean, he was, he has, I mean, you can decide how much credit you want to give to individuals. He played a real role in this election financially and socially, call it. He played a role. I mean, and and Trump has embraced him repeatedly on the campaign trail. He's not treating him like a rich pest who you have to suffer in order to get get his money. He has really embraced him so far.

• 44:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yep.

• 44:44Speaker 02

  So he's gonna he's gonna play kind of a role he wants to play, it seems, at the outset.

• 44:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, and he shouted him out again in the victory speech this early this morning.

• 44:52Speaker 02

  He did, but again, remember, remember Trump in 2017 when he took office, and remember all the people who were around him and how few of them were there just one year later.

• 45:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, basically, almost nobody except the family.

• 45:05Speaker 02

  Correct. And Steve Mnuchin, he lasted.

• 45:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, so before we go, I'd love to hear both your bull case and bear case for the Trump economy over the next four years. Why don't we go with Dan first and then Anna?

• 45:19Speaker 02

  I'm on the spot here. All right. I mean, the bull case is that Trump gets to inherit a really strong economy and there's not particular reasons to think that that that there's kind of a crash on the horizon, right? Like, you know, he's, he's getting something that's got a lot of tailwinds behind it and including technological tailwinds when it comes to things like AI, which the US continues to lead in. And if the next great global tech slash business trend is something the US is leading in, that that's a really good tailwind to to inherit and to be able to to continue to foster. And clearly, there were some things that Biden did that were kind of, if not anti-business, definitely restricted business. On the other hand, the the bear case is Trump revels in chaos. And you don't always know where that is going. You don't know what necessarily

• 46:03Speaker 02

  what he's going to do next. He doesn't necessarily know what he's going to do next. And and leave aside market uncertainty slash certainty. Decisions that get made impulsively, which Trump often seems to make, can lead to pretty disastrous results.

• 46:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And is the spending, I mean, just one follow up to that, the spending can eventually catch up? It doesn't seem like it has yet, but it has to eventually. Or maybe I'm wrong. I don't know.

• 46:29Speaker 02

  I don't know if it has to catch up in in four years. But look, I mean, look, there's some basic, there are a lot of very basic math problems with what Trump has promised. Again, go back to what Elon said. Elon is somehow going to cut more money off the budget than exists in the budget. So like, there's some, there's some basic math problems that have to get solved here, even even if Trump, you know, follows through on a lot of his promises.

• 46:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, Anna, what do you think the bull case and the bear case is for the next four years?

• 46:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I would say something similar. The bull case is that, you know, his, some of these threats that he's just make that he's making in terms of what he would do to the economy really are, you know, more about showmanship and and bluster.

• 47:09Speaker 01

  Tariff threats are just that threats, um, you know, it's something that he uses to extract some concessions from other countries, but maybe not that actually disruptive to global trade. And again, I mean, trade actually is kind of a small percentage of the overall US economy. Like, we're a big economy and we're kind of, um, isolated. So compared to some other countries, we're not actually as exposed to trade. Um, you know, bear case, I guess immigration is a slogan and not something he can, you know, actually practically accomplish. Tax cuts, you know, go through Congress and end up being like a somewhat sensible policy process. Um, I mean, I think the bear case, you know, for me, do we get

• 47:52Speaker 01

  into a big trade war? You know, I was just talking about critical minerals, um, from China, you know, do we see really significant supply chain disruptions in various parts of the world? And then I think honestly, you know, do we see an actual war? You know, like, I, um, uh, going back to the, he knows I'm effing crazy comment, um, you know, there are a lot of, there's a lot of instability in various parts of the world. I mean, what do we see with Russia? What do we see with Taiwan? Um, so yeah, I don't wanna, uh, you know, be too, too negative this morning and rain on everybody's, uh, uh, week. But, um,

• 48:34Speaker 01

  I think that, you know, the, the possibility of real, like, international instability is, is definitely something that we're gonna be watching for.

• 48:43Speaker 02

  Can I give one more also than ties to Anna said on immigration? We, we've talked about undocumented workers getting deported and Trump said he's gonna do that on day one. There, there's also this bigger legal immigration question. Trump has tried in the past to, to, to tamp down on it. You heard some talk about that during the campaign. You know, long-term for the US economy, particularly when it comes to technology in Silicon Valley, that's an issue, right? And I, and I appreciate that maybe we won't need as many workers in the future because we, we've got bots to do everything for us. But like, it, it's a, it, it's been surprising, it was surprising to me that when a bunch of Silicon Valley venture capitalists were talking a lot about Trump, Trump's, you know, little tech positive agenda, uh, that immigration rarely came up because not only do immigrants historically found a lot of companies, people who come to Stan, from overseas to Stanford, MIT, to Harvard, to these other US educational institutions, often stay here and become incredibly,

• 49:28Speaker 02

  not just productive members of society, but kind of transformational ones. Look, Elon Musk is one of them. So, we'll see.

• 49:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  Anna and Dan, definitely want to let listeners know where to find your work. So Anna, do you want to tell people where to subscribe and find your articles?

• 49:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure. So I write for the New York Times. You can Google me, it's A-N-A-S-W-A-N-S-O-N at N Y T. I have all my articles up there and definitely appreciate everybody reading and supporting the Times.

• 49:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  Great. And some, some great stories about Nvidia there and sort of broader U S A I chips and making their way into the hands of people in China, even if we had some trade restrictions. So definitely recommend people check that out. And Dan, how can people sign up?

• 50:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I'm business editor at Axios and I write on the Pro Rata newsletter, which covers kind of deals and deal makers. You can get that at getprorata. Axios.com.

• 50:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  Great stuff. Highly recommend it. All right, everybody. Thank you for listening. Thank you, Dan and Anna for coming on the show. We'll be back on Friday with another show, mostly focused on tech. We've done a lot of politics in the middle of this week. We'll go back to the bread and butter on Friday and then we'll have some fun stuff coming up for you next week. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time on Big Technology Podcast.

• 50:40Speaker 03

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