At President Donald Trump’s inauguration, the prime seats were reserved for powerful tech CEOs who also happen to be among the world’s richest men. They are not so rich now.
In one image from the event, Marco Rubio looks on from the background, facing a lineup of tech’s wealthiest leaders. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, stand beside Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and his fiancee, Lauren Sánchez, along with Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Elon Musk, one of Trump’s closest advisers. The world’s wealthiest person, Musk also runs Tesla, SpaceX and the social platform X. Also at the Capitol for the day’s events were Apple CEO Tim Cook and TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew.
Here they are!
Ben Norton wrote: “Donald Trump’s inauguration is full of billionaire oligarchs, just like his cabinet — including the richest plutocrats on Earth: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg. Seeing them all together is the perfect symbol of the oligarchy whom the US government truly serves.”
How much have they lost?
Just seven weeks later, five of these billionaires have collectively lost US$210bn of their net worth, according to a Bloomberg report.
Now, the S&P 500 has fallen nearly 7 per cent since Trump’s inauguration, dragging down some of the world’s biggest fortunes.
The companies behind the inauguration attendees’ fortunes have been some of the biggest losers, dropping a combined US$1.39 trillion in market value since Jan 17.
Here are the biggest hits they have taken…
Elon Musk (lost US$145 billion)
Jeff Bezos (lost US$31 billion)
Sergey Brin (lost US$23 billion)
Mark Zuckerberg (lost US$8 billion)
Bernard Arnault (lost US$5 billion)
Trump losses?
Also, shares of Trump Media sank more than 11% on Monday, accelerating the company’s downward slide since President Donald Trump took office.
The company behind Trump’s preferred social media app Truth Social ended the brutal trading day at $19.92 per share — down 50% from its closing price on Jan. 20, the day Trump was sworn in.
He also used Truth Social to announce he is doubling down on Canadian tariffs.
Trump wrote on Truth Social.“Based on Ontario, Canada, placing a 25% Tariff on ‘Electricity’ coming into the United States, I have instructed my Secretary of Commerce to ad [sic] an ADDITIONAL 25% Tariff, to 50%, on all STEEL and ALUMINUM COMING INTO THE UNITED STATES FROM CANADA, ONE OF THE HIGHEST TARIFFING NATIONS ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD.”
The president said the tariffs would go into effect in the morning of Wednesday 12 March, and again threatened to make Canada the 51st US state.
Related: Bluesky users react to X outages as Musk’s claims ‘garbage’
