To exempt or not to exempt. That is the question for the tech bros of Silicon Valley who have found themselves in a spin as their man in the White House creates havoc with international supply chains and share prices.

It was just 85 days ago that the executives of the world’s biggest technology firms, from Apple’s Tim Cook to Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, lined up to watch Donald Trump inaugurated as the next US president. Eager to back the new administration, which promised an era of regulation-free growth, Zuckerberg killed off Facebook’s fact-checking unit and internal diversity policies. Cook personally donated $US1 million ($1.6 million).