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President Trump kicked off his second term with a flurry of executive actions that could have ripple effects across the economy, and top company executives have taken note.
Tech executives, for instance, sat front and center to watch Trump be sworn in at his inauguration. Meta (META) CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon (AMZN) CEO Jeff Bezos, and Google (GOOG) CEO Sundar Pichai occupied the seats traditionally reserved for immediate family members and guests of honor.
“If you look at the inauguration and the seating chart of the inauguration, it gives you a pretty good idea of which sectors and which companies got the prime spots,” Investopedia editor in chief Caleb Silver explained on Yahoo Finance’s Stocks in Translation podcast (see video above or listen below).
Many market participants are eyeing Trump’s proposed policies of mass deportation, deregulation, and tariffs with caution as they assess the potential impacts on investments. Though courts have blocked some of Trump’s initial executive orders, the president will be looking to leave a mark with Republican control of the House and Senate.
Tech is one sector that could thrive under Trump’s second term in office. During Trump’s first week in office, he rescinded some of former President Biden’s executive actions that placed regulations on the development of AI, “clearing a path for the United States to act decisively to retain global leadership in artificial intelligence,” according to one executive order.
Trump also announced that companies such as SoftBank (SFTBY), Oracle (ORCL), and OpenAI would invest $500 billion into a new project called Stargate aimed at developing AI over the next four years.
But as tech stands to benefit, other sectors potentially face greater hurdles during the second Trump administration.
For starters, although green energy stocks saw some significant returns under Trump 1.0, they are likely to be challenged.
“You’re seeing the drillers do very well in this environment,” Silver said. “You’re seeing the oil majors do very well in this environment, and the services that support the drilling industry are doing very well now as well. So you’re seeing investors pull out of — if they haven’t already — green sectors and move them into oil and gas in the fossil fuel sector.”
And it’s not just the big green energy players that are likely to be hit, Silver said. He noted that Trump’s efforts to roll back green energy credits in the Inflation Reduction Act mean that small businesses and individual consumers will have fewer incentives to make climate-conscious purchases.
