The Silicon Valley is reportedly facing an uncertain future following Republican Donald Trump's victory in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections. Trump was not only critical about several major tech firms in the country during his campaign, but is also yet to announce a specific technology policy.
In June this year, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton had released a detailed tech platform, which was applauded by executives. On the contrary, Trump advocated stringer limits on immigration as well as trade led to panic in the tech circles, which greatly depends high-skilled immigrants and also earns a major part of their revenue from abroad, Wall Street Journal reported.
Furthermore, Trump's standpoint that attributed the sufferings of many common Americans to the elites may also affect the Silicon Valley. The president-elect has accused the industry of being profit and market-centric, while ignoring the employment needs of the middle class Americans.
Silicon Valley's dependence on overseas talents is reflected from the fact that several top tech executive have been lobbying for immigration reform and opening the doors for more foreign workers in the United States. In 2013, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and venture capitalist Ron Conway joined hands to help establish FWD.US, an association that works for the cause of immigrant workers, Los Angeles Times reported.
During his aggressive campaign, Trump took potshots at several big tech companies. While the Republican nominee urged the consumers to boycott Apple products for the tech giant's denial to assist the FBI access the iPhone of a slain terrorist, he accused IBM of moving jobs abroad.
Trump also criticized Jeff Bezos for allegedly for utilizing the Washington Post, owned and run by him, to promote the interests of the retail giant Amazon Inc, which is also owned by Bezos. However, Bezos has vehemently refuted the claims made by the president-elect during his campaign.
Therefore, it is not surprising that Trump did not receive much support from the tech executives during his campaign. Aside from entrepreneur and venture capitalist Peter Thiel, most tech stalwarts either maintained a distance from the campaigning, or supported Clinton. In fact, Meg Whitman, Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. chief executive, and John Chambers, chairman of Cisco Systems Inc, both considered to be two prominent Republicans in the industry, also backed Clinton.
Soon after the counting of votes began on Nov. 8, Tuesday, several tech executives as well as investors expressed their concern over a possible Trump victory. Shervin Pishevar, a prominent venture capitalist, went to the extent of suggesting that California should secede if Trump was elected the next president of the United States.
1/ If Trump wins I am announcing and funding a legitimate campaign for California to become its own nation.
Contrary to this, the tech industry flourished under President Barack Obama. Today, the four most valuable companies worldwide are Apple, Google parent Alphabet Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Amazon. Incidentally, all of them are tech firms.
Watch Clinton supporters staging violent protests across the United States against Trump's victory: