While the world comes to grips with the fact that Donald Trump has been elected President of the Unites States – the global tech sector is trying to work out how this will affect them.
While Trump was campaigning he spoke out on a few tech issues and even called for a boycott on Apple until it allowed the authorities to crack a dead terrorist’s iPhone.
The man who will become the leader of the free world also spoke about cyber security and even welcomed the Russians to snoop around Hillary Clinton’s controversial emails.
But President-Elect Trump is a self-confessed luddite who has admitted he doesn’t even use a cellphone or use email.
And yet he is quite active on Twitter with his account @realDonaldTrump. Now either he DOES have a phone – he has tweeted from an iPhone and a Samsung device – or he tells someone a lot tech savvier than him what to tweet for him.
All of the many shots of Donald Trump taken at his desk in Trump Tower there has never been a computer in sight.
In fact, it looks like he has a certain contempt for technology and that disdain has Silicon Valley in a panic.
Confidence in the currently thriving start-up market could disappear and investors may stay away and keep their wallets firmly closed.
Billionaire Peter Thiel, an investor in PayPal, was the only major entrepreneur to support Trump before the election.
He congratulated Trump on his victory and said it was “long past time for us to face up to our country’s problems”.
Other notable Silicon Valley figures including Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman all distanced themselves from Theil and from Donald Trump.
But Trump has said he would also cut taxes and that would benefit some of the largest tech brands like Apple, Google and Microsoft which are all American-based.
One of the things that got Trump elected to the presidency was his appeal to the disillusioned workers who were seeing their jobs shipped offshore.
Part of Trump’s platform was to bring manufacturing back to the United States.
At the moment all of the major tech companies build their product in China because it’s vastly cheaper.
Trump has been quite vocal about China and was critical about their trade abuses and alleged manipulation of currency.
There has already been talk that Trump could impose tariffs of up to 45 per cent on goods manufactured offshore – which is essentially nearly everything – and that would unravel decades of economic policy.
The fallout of these decisions could see prices of tech products like smartphones and computers from American companies like Apple, Microsoft and Google go through the roof.
And who knows what foreign tech companies like Samsung, LG and Sony will fare bringing their products into the US if Trump tinkers with trade deals and tariffs.
Now Donald Trump has been elected President there are naturally many concerns whether he will come through with some of the inflammatory things he said during his campaign like building a wall between the US and Mexico and stopping all Muslims at the border.
And will these stark economic ideas and reforms also be enforced when Trump enters the Oval Office.
Trump was elected because people wanted a radical change but the fear now is just how far he is going to take things and whether he puts the country’s money where his mouth is.
Whether we like it or not – it’s going to have a major effect on the tech community for better and worse.
