Big Tech had little to say about President Donald Trump during their earnings calls this week.
Neither Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, nor Snap mentioned the president at all, according to a review of transcripts from Q2 earnings calls by AlphaSense, a market intelligence company. Meta mentioned “Trump” just once in a press release from April 11.
Big Tech executives have aligned themselves closer to Trump since he won the election. Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago after the election, and Google donated $1 million to the inauguration fund. Apple CEO Tim Cook did the same.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg also donated to the fund. On a podcast this week, Zuckerberg said, “Our default as an American company should be to try to have a productive relationship with whoever is running the government.”
The absence of direct mentions of Trump is perhaps surprising given the disruption the president’s trade policy has caused American businesses.
Trump has said his goal in enacting broad tariffs is to rectify an “imbalance” that has “fueled a large and persistent trade deficit in both industrial and agricultural goods,” according to the White House.
The tariffs have forced companies, especially ones that sell consumer goods, to rethink their strategies. During the ongoing 90-day pause on the “reciprocal” tariffs that Trump issued in April, some companies have begun diverting inventory closer to their US markets and looking for alternatives to manufacturing in China, which has taken the brunt of the tariffs.
While Big Tech avoided talking about Trump, they did have plenty to say about tariffs this quarter. Last quarter, tariffs only came up a handful of times.
Amazon and Apple, the two biggest sellers of consumer goods, made up the bulk of Big Tech’s tariff talk during the recent earnings calls. Amazon mentioned tariffs 16 times in its earnings call on Thursday. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said that “Amazon is not uniquely susceptible to tariffs” and expressed some optimism that the company could still keep prices low.
Apple, meanwhile, mentioned tariffs 26 times on its earnings call. Cook said the company “had a limited impact from tariffs” and was able to “optimize our supply chain and inventory” for the past quarter. He said he expects tariffs to add about $900 million to its costs this quarter — provided that the administration makes no further changes.
Apple is also diverting iPhone production from China to India to mitigate the impact of tariffs. Cook said the company expects “the majority of iPhones sold in the US will have India as their country of origin” in the June quarter.
Microsoft CFO Amy Hood mentioned tariffs once on the company’s earnings call on Wednesday. Discussing Microsoft’s personal computing revenue, which came in at $13.4 billion, she said, “Windows OEM and Devices revenue increased 3% year-over-year, ahead of expectations as tariffs uncertainty through the quarter resulted in inventory levels that remained elevated.”
Times have changed since this time last year, when Trump and his economic policies were out of sight and out of mind.
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