On the back of his successful election win this month, Donald Trump is already making controversial moves which is a cause for concern by the honchos of the tech world.

For most US tech companies, this could mean a limit on the H-1B visas (non-immigrant visas that allow US employers to hire capable foreign workers for specialised fields). This could potentially put pressure on these firms to move to hire inbound workers. Trump who plans to reduce the number of job opportunities overseas, this move could implicate higher costs in production/manufacturing, which in turn could create a less competitive market.

Trump had voiced his opinion on the Apple/FBI case, criticising Apple for not assisting the FBI in decoding the iPhone in the San Bernardino shooting means that Trump could be in favour of government surveillance, as at the time, called to boycott Apple.

Most recently, Trump has lambasted Time Warner following reports of US telecoms company AT&T planning on purchasing the cable company. Trump, who has made public of his dislike for CNN, a division of Time Warner, was quick to criticise the deal citing that it’s “a deal we will not approve in my administration because it’s too much concentration of power in the hands of too few”.

Trump also took a swipe at Amazon CEO Jeff Bizos over the company’s low taxes as he claimed that Bizos is using The Washinton Post for his personal attacks on Trump.

However, there is some optimism. Many bigwigs of Silicon Valley are hopeful that Trump will be an advocate for less regulation which will prevent pitfalls for businesses and could be great for M&A (mergers and acquisitions).

Despite being quite inconsistent through his US Presidential campaign, we’ll have to wait for his inauguration on January 20th, 2017 to finally know what policies he’ll implement and what Trump will actually do.

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