US elections: Where do tech giants and billionaires stand on Trump and Harris?

By Darren Lyn

HOUSTON, US (AA) - US tech giants and billionaires are drawing lines in the sand when it comes to supporting either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris in the upcoming presidential election.

National donation data shows that workers at Amazon, Microsoft and Google’s parent company Alphabet are donating millions to Vice President Harris, while Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings made a $7 million donation to her campaign.

Conversely, tech billionaires like Tesla CEO Elon Musk and billionaire investors Bill Ackman and David Sacks are throwing their millions behind Trump. Woody Johnson, co-owner of the NFL football team New York Jets, has donated $1 million to Trump’s cause.

The reasoning behind these mega-donors comes down to one prominent factor, according to Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University in Houston.

“We’re seeing this divide because these billionaires are giving primarily based on their personal and ideological preferences, rather than to promote their business interests,” Jones told Anadolu.

“Given that some of them are more progressive and some are more conservative, you see a difference in who they support, with the progressives lining up behind Harris and conservatives lining up behind Trump.”

Arguably, the most prominent billionaire who has thrown himself headfirst into the political arena during the 2024 election is Musk, who has positioned himself as an ardent Trump supporter.

“Musk is getting actively involved in politics for political reasons. He is not giving to promote his business interests,” said Jones.

Jones pointed out that Musk, who owns X, the social media giant formerly known as Twitter, has a mass communication platform to disseminate his political beliefs to his 198 million followers with the click of a button.

“Unlike the other leaders (such as tech billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder of Meta/Facebook) who grew their business and are politically active simply because of their wealth, Musk purchased Twitter in large part to have this platform,” said the professor.

He said Musk “purposefully purchased Twitter with the goal of increasing his political agenda or desire to be more politically active.”

“Elon Musk is a very savvy businessperson, and I don’t think he purchased Twitter as a profit-generating enterprise. It was more a way for him to become a more relevant actor on the national stage,” said Jones.

Having that kind of mass platform changes the dynamic of Musk being a behind-the-scenes billionaire political donor to being a tech billionaire able to share his political ideology with millions, Jones explained.

“To provide a platform for himself to play a more active role in politics, in the political world, both indirectly, in terms of determining content, what content is acceptable and not acceptable on X and who can have accounts and who cannot have accounts, but also directly via his own participation online, which always generates a massive impact, given his number of followers and his reach,” he said.

- Billionaires on the political battlefield

However, Musk’s influence on social media does not necessarily translate into direct support of his political agenda, and that can be seen in his own companies: Tesla, SpaceX, and X.

According to the non-partisan nonprofit group OpenSecrets, which tracks US campaign contributions, employees at Tesla have contributed nearly twice as much to Harris’ campaign ($42,824) than to Trump ($24,840).

At SpaceX, workers have contributed nearly five times as much to Harris ($34,526) versus Trump ($7,652), while at X, donations to the Harris campaign ($13,213) are more than 26 times that of the less than $500 given to the Trump campaign.

Campaign finance laws prohibit companies themselves from donating to federal campaigns, and while the political donations from Musk’s three firms are relatively small for campaign fundraising, they are a spot check that Musk’s own employees do not see eye-to-eye with their boss.

Some political experts have argued that Musk’s endorsement of Trump has actually backfired, especially with the billionaire’s anti-worker and anti-union stance.

“Every time that Elon Musk tries to do something to help Donald Trump, I think it fires up the Democratic base to work against him,” Democratic strategist Pete Giangreco told NBC News.

Musk is not the only high-profile billionaire donor on the political battlefield.

On the Democratic side, billionaire investor and Shark Tank host Mark Cuban has taken a proactive role in his support of Harris. He told the global online publication Semafor that he speaks with the Harris campaign “three or four times” a week regarding fiscal policy.

Cuban said he commends Harris for taking a stance to increase the capital gains tax to 28% for investors with $1 million or more in income, which is higher than the current 23.6% but significantly less than the 44.6% rate proposed by President Joe Biden in July.

“She’s talked more about entrepreneurs and helping them have access to investment and making it easier for people to invest in startups than anybody,” Cuban told CNBC, which could be a big reason why a group of more than 100 venture capitalists headed by the biggest investor, Cuban, threw its support behind Harris.

“We are pro-business, pro-American dream, pro-entrepreneurship, and pro-technological progress,” the group said in a statement. “We also believe in democracy as the backbone of our nation.”

- Donations for political clout

Three of the biggest tech companies – Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft – have backed Harris through their employees and families, with at least $1 million in campaign contributions.

According to OpenSecrets, Alphabet workers and their families have donated $2.16 million to the Harris campaign, nearly 40 times as much as they have donated to the Trump campaign.

Amazon employees and their family members have donated 10 times as much to Harris ($1 million) versus Trump ($116,000). Microsoft workers and their families have contributed more than 12 times the amount to Harris ($1.1 million) than they have to Trump ($88,000).

The two other tech giants – Meta, which owns Facebook, and Apple – have not yet hit the $1 million donation mark to Harris through their employees and families, but their donations to the vice president far exceed those coming in for Trump.

Meta workers and their families have donated $835,000 to Harris, which is more than 33 times the amount they have contributed to Trump ($25,000).

Apple workers and their family members have made $861,000 in contributions to the Harris campaign, which is nearly 20 times more than they have donated to the Trump campaign ($44,000).

Money talks when it comes to spreading political influence, which is a major reason why tech companies and billionaires are venturing into the fray during the 2024 presidential election.

“Most people wouldn’t be able to pick them out in the lineup, but their money allows them to have an impact that dwarfs that of virtually every other citizen by a factor of millions,” said Jones.