WASHINGTON, DC – Today, the Tech Oversight Project released a scathing report on massive handouts to the tech lobby in Trump’s Project 2025 takeover plan and the Republican National Committee platform. The report details how Republican policies would be a disaster for the American people – raising prices for goods and services online, eliminating the Federal Trade Commission and key worker protections, entrenching Big Tech’s political power, and paving the way for tech to roll back its climate pledges.
“Google, Apple, Amazon, and Meta are selling the American people up the river to protect their monopolistic profits and their self-ordained right to raise prices on goods and services that small businesses and families rely on. If Republicans carry out the Trump-Project 2025 agenda, they will entrench Big Tech’s political power – making it harder and harder to ever truly hold them accountable for the harm they cause to society,” said Sacha Haworth, Executive Director of the Tech Oversight Project. “These tech companies cosplay as benevolent institutions but behind closed doors, they made a cynical ploy to cozy up to Republicans in order to protect their bottom line. They are monopolies that do not want unionized workforces, basic safety regulations, or environmental protections. That’s why they love Trump and Project 2025. They do not care that it will raise prices and make the rest of our economy weaker.”
Key Findings:
- Project 2025 opens the door to abolishing the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
- In the last year, Meta has filed litigation to abolish the FTC because the agency opened up an enforcement action against the tech giant for violating children’s online privacy.
- Project 2025 attacked the idea of FTC field offices, which play a critical role in helping the FTC carry out its consumer protection and competition missions. Regional offices also help connect people who have been scammed, many on social media platforms, with resources.
- Project 2025 calls for a “recalibration” of antitrust and consumer protection laws, alluding to the need to trust corporations over the public interest.
- Project 2025 will remove the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement. This would make it easier for companies like Amazon and Google to continue backtracking on emissions pledges, and with AI energy consumption dramatically rising, it would make it harder to pursue clean energy production.
- Project 2025 would undermine the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and make it more difficult for tech company workers to organize and collectively bargain.
- Apple, Google, and Amazon have all cracked down on union organizing at their companies, and Elon Musk has long made fighting the NLRB a mission of his.
- Project 2025 would slash the corporate tax rate for Big Tech’s monopolies – further entrenching their power.
- The RNC platform calls for propping up the commercial space industry and enhancing partnerships within the space industry, which is an obvious carveout for Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.
- Project 2025 would abolish the Federal Reserve – paving the way for banks to back their notes with crypto and making it easier to take advantage of American families.
- The RNC platform walks back the Republican position on amending section 230.
- The RNC platform includes zero mention of antitrust efforts against Big Tech monopolies.
- The RNC platform would boost crypto and AI while blocking policies that protect consumers and genuine competition in the tech space.
- The RNC platform calls for repealing President Biden’s executive order on AI, which directs agencies to protect Americans’ privacy, advance equity and civil rights, protect consumers, and promote innovation and competition.
- Following the platform’s release and the announcement of former Silicon Valley tech executive J.D. Vance as Trump’s running mate, Big Tech bundlers have come out of the woodwork to pour millions into Trump’s campaign.
- Elon Musk has committed $160 million to a prominent Trump super PAC.