let's turn to Steve kovak now for more on the issues facing them in the Trump Administration I was reminded in that earlier read Steve that a lot of these investigations did start under the Trump previous that's exactly right and I think that's kind of getting lost in this conversation today around mergers and Acquisitions and antitrust and what all that might look like under the next Trump Administration so look the four big government antitrust cases against Amazon Apple alphabet and meta like you said all began under Trump's first Administration and it wasn't for most part until
the Biden Administration that those lawsuits were ready let me give you a recap of these cases here the FTC versus Amazon accusing Amazon of stifling competition and blocking out lower prices then there's the doj versus alphabet on search we all know alphabet lost that case and the doj is now considering a break up of Google still waiting for the judge to decide on that though and there's a second alphabet case against its digital advertising business waiting for a ruling on that and then this spring we got the doj antitrust case against Apple which is focusing
on an alleged Monopoly on the high end of the smartphone market and policies around the App Store among other things and then the FTC versus meta this lawsuit actually came out at the end of the first trp Administration it's gone through a bunch of appeals and so forth still being worked out but it's still alive and well now outside of those cases the FTC is investigating Microsoft's investment in open aai and in January ordered those two companies to provide information related to the investigation FTC at the same time is looking at alphabet and Amazon's investment
in open AI rival anthropic as for Trump of course he's been seen as a big Tech critic for many years now at the same time his future vice president JD Vance has praised the strict regulatory regime under Joe Biden Trump has also said he recently spoke with CEOs of some of those companies that includes alphabet's CEO sundor Pai and Apple CEO Tim Cook Washington Post also reported Amazon CEO Andy jie recently spoke with Trump as well and today Andy jasse suor Bai Mark Zuckerberg and in Adela all posted their congratulations to Trump's win on their
respective social media platforms what to look for next though it really comes down to who gets appointed to run antitrust at the doj and to replace Lena Khan as chair of the FTC so pay attention to those picks that will give us at least some indication how these cases will progress how influential might Elon Musk be in shaping the Trump administration's approach to we know he's not a fan of Mark Zuckerberg um is that why met is down today that some people were speculating who knows but yes that could be part we know that that
musk musk musk is not a fan and at various times we've heard Trump praise these people and admonish them at the same time uh we know there's definitely a contentious relationship with musk and Zuckerberg there have been some contention between um Apple CEO Tim Cook and musk over when Apple pulled its advertising off of X numerous issues everyone's involved at the same time musk was out there today on X uh thinking basically all these CEOs who were congratulating Trump today and you know American flag emojis and things like that so he's at least projecting happiness
at these uh CEO say it feels like the Trump relationship with Silicon Valley is I hesitate to use this word a little better than it was four years ago eight years ago Fair yeah I think that's fair to say and look at what happened uh during the first Trump uh presidency after his election after his inauguration uh we had um just thought like for example uh alphab they had a big town hall meeting a lot of people were upset and they kind of talked about that kind of stuff we saw these very like outward projections
of uh anti-trumpism let's just call it we saw that less from Apple uh during that first ter we saw Apple Co Tim Cook kind of take a back step and work more behind the scenes not being so front and uh forward- facing about how he was dealing with Trump and by the way that kind of worked out for him because he got some uh relief on the Tariff front there uh as those were getting implemented back in 2019 all right Steve thank you very much Steve
