AI Winners & Losers in the Trump Era

Need a personal assistant? We do too, that’s why we use AI.

Ready to embrace a new era of task delegation?

HubSpot’s highly anticipated AI Task Delegation Playbook is your key to supercharging your productivity and saving precious time.

Learn how to integrate AI into your own processes, allowing you to optimize your time and resources, while maximizing your output with ease.

Get the free guide here.

MARKETS
AI Winners & Losers in the Trump Era

In January 2025, Trump will become the 47th President of the United States. His term will mark a significant departure from current views, which comes at what is possibly the most important moment in Artificial Intelligence’s history.

So, what will happen to AI and its incumbents during the Trump era?

By the end of the article, you will have unique access to what’s expected from this Administration, with the winners and losers of this event, as well as what I feel will determine the success or failure of Trump’s AI policies, something that is rarely if ever, mentioned.

Breaking With the Past

Before we discuss the winners and losers and the key consequences, we’ll examine Trump’s incumbency based on strict evidence from two perspectives: geopolitics and AI policy.

AI & Geopolitics

China. As JD Vance, Vice President-elect, has publicly stated, the US will no longer pretend they care about Europe. With the new term, the US’ priority will unapologetically be the Pacific axis (it was already, despite the Ukraine war), aka China and the US allies in the area (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines).

Concerningly, the incoming POTUS will probably face one of the worst escalations in the Pacific in decades. China is dead serious about the Republic of China, known as Taiwan, being part of the ‘One China,’ and Xi Jinping has not been afraid to suggest they might use force if necessary.

According to US Intelligence, Xi Jinping has instructed his army officials to be ready for an invasion as soon as 2027. Of course, this means that the theoretical invasion will take place during Trump’s new term.

While Biden’s Administration has not been shy of threatening escalation to protect their ally, Trump isn’t quite as fond of Taiwan. In many interviews, he has said that Taiwan ‘stole’ the US chip manufacturing industry and that the US is working as an ‘insurance company’ to Taiwan, suggesting they need to start paying in some way for that stringent defense.

Most of the world's advanced industries, such as cars, computers, smartphones, and AI, rely on advanced chips… 90% of which are produced in Taiwan, especially by one company, TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Company).

Among the many US corporations that depend on TSMC to manufacture their chips are NVIDIA, Apple, Qualcomm (and thereby Microsoft), Tesla, Meta, Amazon, and a long tail of S&P500 companies. Even Intel, which can produce its own chips, is a TSMC customer.

Put another way, more than one-third of the S&P500’s market value depends on TSMC chip manufacturing capacity. So, what would happen if China invaded Taiwan?

While we don’t know for sure, here are several things to point out:

• Robert O’Brien, Principal National Security Advisor to Trump during his first term, suggested that the US would destroy the TSMC factories (each $20 billion in costs) before China has them. If that’s not World War III-type stuff, it’s close.

• Avril Haines, Director of National Security, estimated that this event would erode between $600 billion and $1 trillion of economic value annually for many years. For reference, that’s Walmart’s yearly revenue in direct losses (Walmart is the world’s leading company in revenue terms).

As both Trump and JD Vance consider AI a matter of national security, Taiwan will be a hot topic.

AI Policy

There are currently hundreds of pieces of AI legislation in the US, both at the federal and state levels. So, what about direct AI policy? Trump has said a lot about AI in interviews.

• In the Republican Platform statement, Trump announced he would repeal Joe Biden’s ‘dangerous’ AI Executive Order, which placed stringent regulations and scrutiny on AI labs training large AI models (equal to or above GPT-4-level training budgets). In other words, massive deregulation in favor of AI model training is coming.

• He’s not fond of Lina Khan, Chair of the Federal Trade Commission. Big Tech hates her due to the intense scrutiny of their actions, especially regarding mergers and acquisitions (M&A). Trump loves deal-making, so you can consider her gone. With her absence, Big Tech companies will have a free way to consolidate the AI industry further. Or will they? More on that later…

• He’s intensely pro-industry, especially when it comes to ‘traditional’ US industries. As AI is increasingly power-hungry, expect an explosion in power generation and transmission, especially through tax credits. If AI development is going to be impacted by lack of power, it’s not going to be because of Trump.

• Finally, Trump has been very outspoken about the costly nature of the CHIPS Act, a bi-partisan bill involving heavy subsidies to onshore chip and semiconductor manufacturing in the US, with targets like TSMC or Intel. Instead, he seems much more comfortable with deregulation and tax credits (and tariffs, obviously). However, some policy experts think otherwise and believe he will eventually uphold the Act.

But I believe that when it comes to making AI-related decisions, they will largely depend on two figures: JD Vance and Elon Musk, as both have a much more informed—and stronger—view of AI.

The Voices Behind Trump’s Ear

The former is the upcoming Vice President. He’s a New York Times best-seller with Hillbilly Elegy, former venture capitalist and senator from Ohio. Importantly, he’s deeply connected with several tech figures, especially Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, which gives us key insight into his thoughts.

For starters, Peter Thiel is notoriously anti-Big Tech, considering that mass disruption requires start-ups that aren’t beholden to the public’s opinion as Big Tech is.

For instance, Google, the company that invented most AI breakthroughs being leveraged today, sat on those discoveries for years amid fears of ethics, social backfire, and disruption of its multiple hundred billion business search model, even allowing OpenAI and Microsoft to claim the industry’s lead. Thiel is also a strong libertarian and unapologetically right-wing.

However, this distaste toward Big Tech, which JD Vance publicly shares, comes at a crossroads with the views of the upcoming President regarding Lina Khan. In fact, JD Vance is considered part of the ‘khanservatives,’ a group inside the Republican Party whose hatred toward Big Tech made them champion Lina Khan’s attacks towards them.

While Lina’s tenure appears to be ending no matter what, some of the ‘losers’ we will cover today could see JD Vance as its newfound enemy.

As for Elon, he needs no introduction. He’s already an extremely powerful figure, one that transcends the physical borders of the US, even acting as an intermediary between US POTUS and people like Putin or Xi Jinping. But thanks to its staunch support toward Trump in the latest election, his influence is going to be massive.

Elon’s position is tricky, though. While Trump envisions up to 60% global tariffs against Chinese imports and even 200% tariffs on cars from countries like Mexico or China (the latter having Elon amongst the clear beneficiaries), Elon’s ties to the CCP are known and deep.

For instance, Tesla is among the sporadic cases of foreign companies with total foreign control. China is also Tesla’s second biggest market, and as recently as January, half of its cars were produced there.

A too-stringent posture from Trump against China could make Tesla (and Elon), among other losers we will discuss today, a clear target of Beijing's reprisals.

All things considered, which companies aim to take a victory lap with Trump’s new Presidency, and which should be crying themselves to sleep?

While some are expected, many golden nuggets await below that will be worth your read.

Become a paying subscriber of Full Premium package to get access to this post and other subscriber-only content.

Already a paying subscriber? Sign In.

A subscription gets you:

• • NO ADS
• • An additional insights email on Tuesdays
• • Gain access to TheWhiteBox's knowledge base to access four times more content than the free version on markets, cutting-edge research, company deep dives, AI engineering tips, & more