Summary
Tech moguls who supported Donald Trump—including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg—lost billions after his “Liberation Day” tariff announcement triggered historic market losses. Standing behind Trump at his inauguration, they had backed his deregulation promises.
Meta dropped 8.96%, Amazon 8.98%, Apple over 9%, and Tesla 5.47%, wiping $208B from global billionaire wealth. Musk lost $8.7B, Bezos $16B, Zuckerberg $17.9B.
Despite their support, their companies face price hikes and AI infrastructure risks.
China’s 34% retaliatory tariffs intensify fears of a looming recession.
In one sense, yes, you’re right.
But I don’t think you’re taking how broken the billionaire psyche is into account. The reason they fight to get so much more than they already have, in addition already having more than many countries even need, is because to them it’s not money anymore. It’s a scoreboard telling them who’s winning and who’s not. Anything that causes them to move down the scoreboard, despite literally not affecting their lives at all, freaks them out.
It’s why they buy off Congress to pay fewer and fewer taxes. Even though their lifestyles would be unaffected by more taxes, they can’t tolerate someone else being richer than them.
That’s in the system we’re used to. They’re banking on now taking over the entire fucking thing. Losing some fake money to gain all of the real power is definitely what they’re lining up for.