Elon Musk, Howard Lutnick and Brian Armstrong among those likely to have Trump’s ear
At stake are their businesses’ bottom lines as the winning Republican candidate prepares to reshape the regulatory and tax environments in which they operate.
Donald Trump’s second administration is months away from taking office but the charm offensive from business leaders has already begun.
Chairmen and chief executives who sat on the sidelines during the election are now jostling to secure influence with the president-elect.
Jeff Bezos, executive chairman of Amazon, the online retailer, was one of the first out of the gate to offer his congratulations to Trump, praising his “extraordinary political comeback”.
Doug McMillon, chief executive of Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, told the president-elect: “We look forward to working with you, your administration and all elected officials across the country to continue investing in American manufacturing and deliver value for our customers.”
Other business leaders who publicly backed Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate, have been more muted in their public responses.
Reid Hoffman, executive chairman of LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional network, said: “Some of his [Trump’s] supporters assured me that this would not be the case: Trump wouldn’t seek to punish political opponents, wouldn’t corruptly play favourites in business or foreign policy, wouldn’t actually enact a crippling, 19th-century tariff regime. On this day, and for Trump’s term, I very much hope they are right.”
At stake are their businesses’ bottom lines as the winning Republican candidate prepares to reshape the regulatory and tax environments in which they operate. So which business leaders are likely to have the ear of the president-elect when he reaches the White House?
Elon Musk, Tesla
The world’s richest man barely needs introduction after his huge bet on Trump’s ability to win the presidential election paid off spectacularly for both his wallet and his personal profile.
Musk, 53, saw his net worth increase by an estimated $US20 billion ($30.4bn) on the day of the election result, which drove up shares in Tesla, his electric vehicle company, by almost 15 per cent.
For now Musk is firmly in Trump’s inner circle and spent election night with him at the Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida. Trump, 78, has said he will name Musk as his administration’s “efficiency tsar”, heading a government commission tasked with making cuts to federal government spending.
Musk is expected to use his position of influence to boost his business interests, which include Tesla vehicles, SpaceX rockets and Neuralink brain chips and depend heavily on government regulation, subsidies and policy.
Howard Lutnick, Cantor Fitzgerald
The 63-year-old Wall Street executive who runs Cantor Fitzgerald, a New York-based investment firm, has become one of Trump’s closest advisers and is in charge of lining up appointees for the new administration.
He has been in Trump’s orbit for decades and once appeared as a guest on The Apprentice, the reality television series that made Trump famous across the United States.
The billionaire businessman was appointed president and chief executive of Cantor Fitzgerald in 1991 and became chairman five years later. The firm occupied five floors at the top of the North Tower of the World Trade Center at the time of the September 11 terrorist attack in 2001. The attack killed 658 Cantor workers, including Lutnick’s brother Gary. Lutnick rebuilt the firm and set up a relief fund for the families of Cantor employees lost that day.
He is a bitcoin evangelist who has defined the American dream as being able to buy a home, with parents able to provide a great life and education for their children.
He has said he will work with Trump and Musk to figure out how to bring down the national debt by ripping out waste from the budget.
Brian Armstrong, Coinbase
One of the biggest early winners in business from the election result was Brian Armstrong, 41, chief executive of the New York-listed cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase.
The value of Armstrong’s stake in the business rose by an estimated dollars 2.1 billion on Wednesday to almost $US9 billion after the shares climbed 31 per cent. The price of bitcoin surged to a record high of more than $US75,000.
The crypto industry, which has faced a series of regulatory investigations under President Biden’s administration, is hoping for an easier ride in Trump’s second term.
Armstrong has capitalised on the political power of the growing number of Americans who have turned to cryptocurrencies as post-pandemic inflation has driven them to seek an alternative to the dollar.
Fairshake, a Coinbase-backed political action committee, said dozens of candidates it backed in the election had won. Trump is unlikely to forget quickly that his decision to court the crypto faithful during the campaign paid off.
Commenting on Trump’s victory, Armstrong said it sent “a clear message that being anti-crypto is a good way to end your career as it doesn’t represent the will of the voters, who are disaffected by the current financial system and want change”.
Scott Bessent, Key Square Capital Management
The hedge fund manager, who became a leading economic adviser to Trump last year, is in the running to be the next Treasury secretary.
Bessent, 62, originally from South Carolina, is the billionaire founder of Key Square Capital Management. He got into investing after meeting and working for Jim Rogers, who was then George Soros’s partner.
Bessent joined Soros Fund Management in 1991 and made his fortune betting against the pound and the yen. He struck out on his own in 2015 and set up Key Square. He was one of the first Wall Street leaders to back Trump a year ago and has said he is the better candidate for the economy.
Bessent has proposed a three-point economic agenda for the new administration, including reducing the budget deficit to 3 per cent of GDP by 2028; achieving 3 per cent GDP growth through deregulation; and producing an extra 3 million barrels of oil or its equivalent a day.
Marc Andreessen, Andreessen Horowitz
Andreessen, 53, co-founder of one of Silicon Valley’s most influential venture capital firms, responded to Trump’s victory by posting a symbol of the American flag on X, Musk’s social media platform, and saying: “It’s time to build.”
He is also a board member of Meta Platforms and Coinbase and threw his weight behind Trump despite being a self-proclaimed Democratic voter in previous elections. He has said he switched loyalties as he believes Trump’s policies will be more favourable for tech and the start-up ecosystem, because of the prospect of lower taxes and lighter regulation.
Speaking on The Ben & Marc Show podcast, which he hosts with his co-founder Ben Horowitz, Andreessen said he was worried about the Biden administration’s plans to regulate AI.
“Any limitations we put [on] ourselves are going to disadvantage the US versus the rest of the world,” he said in July. Andreessen is likely to be an influential figure in the shaping of future policy around tech.
Linda McMahon, ex-World Wrestling Entertainment
The co-founder of the World Wrestling Entertainment empire is working with Lutnick to prepare for the transition of power, with a focus on policy.
McMahon, 76, who likes sitting ringside at wrestling matches, donated millions of dollars to Trump’s campaign for re-election and has been tipped as a possible future commerce secretary.
She started WWE with her husband, Vince McMahon, and grew the business from 13 employees to 800.
She resigned as chief executive of WWE in 2009 to run for the US Senate and was the Republican nominee in Connecticut in 2010 and 2012.
A member of Trump’s cabinet in his first presidential term, she served as head of the US Small Business Administration from 2017-19.
The Times
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