The price of support: the rich close to Trump are impoverished, and farmers are expecting losses
11 March 2025 14:21
The start of Donald Trump’s second presidential term has brought disappointment to many of the billionaires who attended the new president’s inauguration: five of them have already lost a combined $209 billion. This is evidenced by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, "Komersant Ukrainian" reports.
The period between Trump’s election and his inauguration, Bloomberg notes, was a boon for the world’s richest people: the S&P 500 index reached several historic highs. Investors rushed to the stock and cryptocurrency markets, expecting Trump’s policies to be beneficial for business.
But expectations were not met. The S&P 500 index has lost significantly since Trump took office, as massive layoffs of government employees and the presidential tariff wars have affected share prices.
The companies of the wealthy close to Trump have been among the biggest losers: since January 17, the last trading day before the inauguration, their combined value has fallen by $1.39 trillion.
To what extent and why did billionaires lose money?
Elon Musk (down $148 billion)
The 53-year-old Tesla CEO’s fortune peaked at $486 billion on December 17, the largest fortune ever recorded in the Bloomberg Wealth Index. Most of his gains came from Tesla, whose shares almost doubled in value after the election. Since then, the electric car maker has lost all those gains. Consumers in Europe are outraged by Musk’s support for far-right politicians, and Tesla’s sales in Germany fell by more than 70% in the first two months of the year. Chinese deliveries also fell 49% last month to a level not seen since July 2022.
Jeff Bezos (down $29 billion)
In December, his Amazon donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund, and last month Bezos had lunch with the president. And since January 17, Amazon shares have fallen by 14%.
Sergey Brin (down $22 billion)
brin, 51, who co-founded the company, then known as Google, with Larry Page and still holds a 6% stake, had lunch with Trump in Mar-a-Lago after Trump’s re-election in November. And so Alphabet Inc. shares fell by more than 7% in early February after the company missed its quarterly profit forecast.
Mark Zuckerberg (down $5 billion)
Meta gained 19% from mid-January to mid-February. However, since then, its shares have lost all of those gains. The Magnificent Seven index is down 20% since its peak in mid-December.
Bernard Arnault (down $5 billion)
the 76-year-old Arnault, whose family owns the luxury goods conglomerate behind brands like Louis Vuitton and Bulgari, has been a friend of Trump’s for decades. After being down for most of 2024, LVMH shares jumped more than 20% between Election Day and the end of January. Since then, the company has lost most of those gains.
And this is not the end of the story
The U.S. stock market continues to fall on fears that Donald Trump’s trade wars will slow the U.S. economy.
According to Reuters, the previous week’s rapid sell-off resumed, gaining momentum during the last session, with all three major US indices falling sharply.
The S&P 500 index suffered its biggest one-day drop since December 18, while the Nasdaq tech index fell by 4.0%, the biggest one-day percentage drop since September 2022. The S&P 500, after the biggest weekly percentage drop since September, was another 8.6% below its record high reached less than a month ago.
Technology companies are the worst performers. Shares of Nvidia fell by 4.4%, Microsoft and Amazon by 3%. The tech sector as a whole sank by 4%, dragging the entire market down with it.
Farmers are also expecting losses
American farmers are very concerned about Trump’s customs policy. They believe that a trade war will jeopardize exports, increase the cost of goods such as fertilizers, and “harm rural America.” The Financial Times wrote about this
Farmers have well-founded fears that Trump’s tariffs will limit the access of their products – corn, soybeans, meat – to some important US export markets. They are already calling on their president to end the tariff wars as soon as possible and emphasize that it will bring “nothing but pain” to the rural part of America that has been so supportive of Trump.
