AP Technology Writer Michael Liedtke
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — As Big Tech begins its quarterly revenue season this week, industry pioneers have plunged into a cauldron of uncertainty and confusion they didn’t expect when Donald Trump re-entered the White House 100 days ago.
Since President Trump’s inauguration on January 20, large tech stocks have been stolen by trillions of dollars in shareholder wealth amid onslaught of tariffs and other potentially harmful actions.
This is the exact opposite of what Apple CEO Tim Cook, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos hoped they would assemble behind Trump when he vowed.
That unity reflects the belief that Trump’s second stint at the White House is a refreshing shift from the forced regulations of President Joe Biden’s administration, while also unleashing more favorable opportunities for artificial intelligence and trading.
But the Trump administration’s policies so far have plagued the “magnificent seven” companies from Big Tech, a group consisting of Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon, Tesla, Google Parent Alphabet and Facebook Parent Meta platforms. Since Trump took office, the grand Seven total market value had plummeted $3.8 trillion (22%) as of April 20th.
The financial damage was even more severe days after Trump announced mutual tariffs that would have been cleaning up on China’s big technology supply chain and other major markets around the world on April 2. The temporary freeze of most of the most punitive tariffs and the exemption from most fees on electronic devices from China provided some relief, but Trump made it clear that the reprieve could be short-lived.
It depends on big technology that is affecting the world over Trump’s ongoing trade war.
“The massive disruption created by this constant newsflow from the White House is dizzying for the industry and investors, creating great uncertainty and disruption for businesses looking to plan their supply chains, inventory and demand.”
In addition to the upheaval caused by Trump’s tariffs, his administration is also trying to prove regulators’ claims that Meta is carrying out illegal monopolies in social networking, and that he is trying to persuade federal judges to disband Google after search engines were illegally abused last year. Trump has also given no indication that could hinder Apple and Amazon by waiving the antitrust lawsuit filed by the Biden administration.
And Nvidia absorbed a major setback last week when the Trump administration banned selling one of its popular AI chips to China, urging it to record a $5.5 billion bill to account for a reserve of processors intended to be exported to the country.
High-tech CEOs will have the opportunity to discuss fallout from the trade war and other challenges during analyst conference calls held as part of the company’s financial reporting from January to March.
The ceremony is set to release a full financial report after Tesla already revealed on Tuesday that it had dropped 13% from the same period last year.
The decline came against demands for a boycott of consumers amidst vandalism, widespread protests and backlash against Musk’s famous role in the White House overseeing cost-cutting purges for US government agencies.
Google Parent Alphabet Inc. is scheduled to announce its results Thursday after discussing his strategy to reverse Tesla’s decline in market value since Musk joined Trump at the White House. After that, four of the spectacular Seven will be in their turn next week. Meta and Microsoft on April 30th. Amazon and Apple on May 1st.
Operating for the fiscal year ending in January, Nvidia plans to bring things together by releasing quarterly results on May 28th.
This story corrects the date Amazon will release quarterly revenue on May 1st.
Original issue: April 21, 2025 9:20am EDT
