Can Democrats and big tech get back together?

Despite the various frictions, America's technology sector did pretty well during Joe Biden's presidency - and despite the various warnings about his mercurial opponent, many tech executives supported Donald Trump in his 2024 campaign.

- Matthew Yglesias

After his victory, even more rushed to Trump's side, with Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg going on Joe Rogan's podcast to talk about his admiration for the president-elect and the need for more "masculine energy" in U.S. corporate culture. Then came the Liberation Day tariffs, and then Obliteration Day in markets, and finally the Equivocation Day partial tariff rollback. Meanwhile Meta shares are trading below their price on the day of Zuckerberg's appearance on Rogan. It turns out that whatever the merits of masculine energy, a global trade war is not good for the tech industry. The whole episode ought to be an opportunity for a mutual reconsideration from both Democrats and the technology world: How did they come to be so alienated from each other, and isn't it past time for a rapprochement?

It's not just that tech benefits, probably more than any other sector, from the globally integrated cooperative economy that Trump disdains. It's that the underlying motives for Trump's trade policies are rooted in nostalgia economics, which is antithetical to any vision of progress.

For starters, even though Trump's "reciprocal" tariff strategy has now been withdrawn, it's notable that his formula simply ignored the existence of services exports. From Hollywood to Silicon Valley to Wall Street, many of America's most successful companies are service exporters.