r/technology • u/DontFearTheCreaper • 20h ago

Social Media Tech CEOs who grinned behind Trump at inauguration lose billions in wake of tariffs

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-tariff-bezos-musk-zuckerberg-b2727147.html
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u/andrewskdr 20h ago

Those upcoming stock buybacks are going to be dirt cheap

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u/sum1sedate-me 20h ago

Oh yea. I bet they’re planning on layoffs as we speak to get some liquidity and then do stock buy backs. They never end up the butt of the joke, we do.

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u/gizamo 20h ago

Trump will probably throw money at the companies he deems loyal. They'll use that money for buy backs, too.

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u/thekrone 19h ago edited 19h ago

Remember how Trump is working to establish a "sovereign wealth fund"?

You can be absolutely guaranteed that, as long as he is in charge, that fund will only invest in two types of companies:

  1. Trump's own
  2. Trump-loyal (foreign or domestic)

He's crashing the market (which will make stocks cheap). He'll take the tariff money and use it to bail out companies with leadership who are willing to fall in line (or just give him personally a bunch of money), as well as directly give himself billions of dollars... all using taxpayer dollars and while fucking over the working class folks trying to buy groceries.

I genuinely would not be surprised if the tariffs are removed as soon as the sovereign wealth fund starts investing. The market will then bounce back, and prices might come down a bit (but I wouldn't count on it being significant).

Loyalists and oligarchs will pull in billions while making Trump look like a genius (to his followers anyway) because he got the "economy" (that he fucked over) to "recover".

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u/Edie_T 19h ago

Thanks for this explanation. It'll be this huge heist instead of a total decade-long depression then. I'm... thinking that what I was afraid of was worse...

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u/thekrone 19h ago edited 19h ago

Maybe it's just the cynic in me, but everything above seems realistic and absolutely seems like something Trump would do (especially considering how much he caters to the oligarchs who own him and has absolutely no qualms grifting).

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u/lordlaneus 7h ago

This has more or less been going on for decades, but Trump's plan is an escalation in how bold the billionaire class are getting.

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u/mcSainzz 7h ago

Plz provide sources

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u/lordlaneus 7h ago edited 3h ago

I can't say when it became deliberate, but we've had a recession about once every 10 years for a long time, and rich people have figured out how to profit from them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions_in_the_United_States

edit: whoever down voted mcSainzz, don't be a jerk. Asking for sources is important.

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u/blurry_forest 4h ago

Growing up, I remember my teachers would occasionally allude to this - the wealthy become wealthier during recessions, because they buy cheap stock. I just didn’t understand how, until the pandemic happened.

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u/MeoowDude 3h ago

“an escalation” is quite the understatement regarding boldness levels.

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u/Top_Hair_8984 6h ago

So, you're ok with this? Having people who make barely $10/hr will be paying those taxes. For fking billionaires to pay even less taxes?  How?  Please, explain to me as if I was 5 years old.  How is this not going to kill many people.

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u/MonkeyLuven 5h ago

It'll be both

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u/nubbinfun101 4h ago

Gotta love how the new normal for Americans is just everyone getting majorly fucked for a few years. But at least it's not a decade! Winning!

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u/bluepaintbrush 16h ago

I know of exactly zero sovereign wealth funds held by countries with a national deficit, much less one with a -$1,150,000,000 balance. Countries fund sovereign wealth funds with budget surpluses, not with deficits.

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u/usfunca 16h ago

Norway has national debt of $251B, sovereign wealth fund of $1.7T. Most countries with sovereign wealth funds also have significant national debt.

Not to say Trump's "plan" makes any sense, but your comment is just factually incorrect.

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u/bluepaintbrush 15h ago

Countries can hold debt and still run a budget surplus… Norway has had a positive consolidated fiscal balance every quarter since Q2 2022: https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/norway/consolidated-fiscal-balance--of-nominal-gdp

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u/thekrone 15h ago

Thanks for backing me up.

I don't know what the argument is, anyway. The Trump admin has already officially declared their intention to start a sovereign wealth fund.

It's not like we're going to eliminate the national debt before May, when the committee is supposed to submit the plan to the President. So clearly they intend to go ahead with this thing regardless of the massive national debt.

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u/thekrone 15h ago

Do you think anything the Trump administration does or would do is similar to what other, normal, functional governments would do?

Besides, that's just wrong. Most countries that have a sovereign wealth fund have debt.

Either way, it isn't going to stop them from trying.

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u/bluepaintbrush 15h ago

I’m not talking about debt, I’m talking about consolidated fiscal balance.

Unlike a government, a sovereign wealth fund can’t print money. That’s why governments send surplus cash into the SWF.

The US doesn’t have a budget surplus, so where would the cash come from? If the government prints cash to fund the SWF, the monies in the fund will decrease in purchasing power. And the fund is no richer.

Regardless of what Trump wants to do, they can’t create something from nothing. There’s no way to open a bank account without cash or grow an investment that hasn’t been made. I predict that Trump will do what he often does — make a big show of doing something, say he did it (regardless of whether that’s true or not) and deflect when anyone questions its existence.

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u/thekrone 15h ago

Yes, they might fail, but they are going to try. And I wouldn't be surprised if they try to justify income from all of the tariffs to get funding.

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u/bluepaintbrush 14h ago

Unless the revenue from tariffs somehow generates a budget surplus (which is highly unlikely), there won’t be any cash to put in the fund. We have $4,370,000,000 in mandatory spending (SSI, Medicare, Medicaid) before excess cash inflow can be applied elsewhere.

Again, the government can borrow to fund nondiscretionary spending. But it can’t deposit cash that doesn’t exist into a bank account. Nobody in Congress is talking about this like there’s any kind of serious plan. I assume it’s bluster until proven otherwise.

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u/-Ahab- 6h ago

Most people also usually make money when they run a casino.

Everything Trump touches hemorrhages money…

Right into his pockets.

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u/JinkoTheMan 9h ago

I lowkey hope that the economy goes to hell in a hand basket and stays that way throughout Trump’s term. If the economy bounces back during Trump’s term then we’ll never hear the end of it from MAGA. We need these fuckers to finally get hit hard.

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u/dicklessbeast 9h ago

So what do I buy and when?

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u/chocobbq 8h ago

You conspiracy theorists gives trump too much credit. Orange turd don't even know what he's doing or the implication. His tariff is from chatgpt.

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u/alice2wonderland 8h ago

Fucks the economy and figures a way to make the wealthy richer, then gives a slight reprieve to regular citizens and then declares victory. 😡