There’s a reason why every major corporate mogul and multi-billionaire flocked to Donald Trump‘s side during the 2024 elections, and no, unless you’re living inside a candy castle in the clouds, the common good had nothing to do with it.
During his first tenure, Trump introduced the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which significantly reduced the corporate tax rate. According to the POTUS himself, the idea was to promote investment and job creation, but all the legislation ever managed to accomplish was line the pockets of the top 1% earners while giving marginal benefits to the majority. The TCJA ended up increasing the federal debt and making the outrageous wealth inequality in America even worse.
In his first Congressional address, Trump doubled down on these tax policies and explicitly asked the legislative branch to commit to the TCJA. And if that doesn’t explain why Trump and Elon Musk are now best buddies, I don’t know what will. And yet, it seems like even the rich hadn’t exactly counted on Trump’s erratic and unhinged behavior in his burgeoning second istration to complicate their agendas. As the former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull recently said, we’re now dealing with “undiluted” Trump, so of course those tariffs and mass layoffs were going to affect the billionaires’ precious stocks.
According to a new report by Bloomberg, the billionaires who were standing at Trump’s side and grinning ear to ear during his inauguration — including three of the wealthiest people in the world Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos — have lost over $200 billion just in the past few weeks. The companies these people represent took the biggest losses since Jan. 17, the last trading day before inauguration, dropping a whopping $1.39 trillion in market value.
Musk, who is Trump’s closest and most trusted advisor, lost more than the rest of them combined, with his collective net worth now down $148 billion after reaching an all-time high following Trump’s win in the election. Musk’s Tesla shares had almost doubled in value in Q4 2024, but with the tariffs hitting Tesla’s Chinese shipments and the consumer base in Europe boycotting Musk for his advocacy of far-right politicians, the company is fast losing its market value.
Next on the list is Jeff Bezos, who ed Trump by withholding The Washington Post‘s presidential endorsement, congratulating the president on his win, and donating $1 million to his inauguration fund in December. Amazon’s shares have fallen by 14% since Jan. 17, with Bezos losing $29 billion of his net worth.
As for the other three, Sergey Brin (the former co-founder of Google) lost $22 billion, while Mark Zuckerberg and Bernard Arnault (CEO of Louis Vuitton) are down $5 billion each. Not exactly a dent in their egregious pile, but with the stock market continuing its downward spiral and Trump doubling down on his nonsensical economic initiatives, this is only the beginning for these large corporations.
These billionaires are set to recuperate some of these losses when Trump’s tax breaks go into effect again, but where that leaves the rest of the American people, already plagued by rising inflation as a result of those tariffs, is a whole different story.
Published: Mar 11, 2025 11:24 am