In his first 100 days back in the White House, Donald Trump has dramatically reshaped the landscape of the U.S. tech industry, something I’ve been a part of over my entire career. He’s had an impact like no other president in such a short time. It’s included aggressive tariffs, abrupt policy reversals, isolationist moves, and ethically questionable ventures that have left the industry shaken and uncertain. But his actions have also raised the issue of how much we’ve become dependent on China as our source of manufacturing for nearly everything we touch – from computers to furniture to alarm clocks to cables and even light bulbs.
In a seminal three-part article written for The Atlantic called China Makes, the World Takes eight years ago, James Fallows shows how China manufacturing has actually helped America. Now Trump is using the same facts to say it’s hurting the country and wants to protect American interests. But his early actions suggest something more chaotic and less strategic, and a lack of understanding of realities.
The most immediate impact comes from his sweeping 150% tariffs on Chinese imports, targeting essential goods, including smartphones, networking equipment, chips, and server components. Companies whose products rely on complex international manufacturing and component sourcing, as well as thousands of small businesses manufacturing their products in China, will be forced to either absorb these huge tariffs or pass them on to consumers. In either case, their businesses will suffer and there will be layoffs at many of these companies, while others will simply be forced to go out of business. Far from targeting China, the tariffs seems to be punishing American innovation at home.
Trump says his intention is to move more of the manufacturing to the U.S., and some of it will, but it will take years for it happen. A better approach would have been to announce a tariff program that still accomplishes his aim, while allowing an orderly transition to the U.S. sourcing and manufacturing to occur without the chaos of on again-off again announcements.
In the area of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Trump signed an executive order stripping away Biden-era AI protections. Federal guidelines emphasizing fairness, safety, and transparency were replaced with mandates prioritizing “competitive advantage” and military readiness.
The AI industry—already racing ahead with few guardrails—now finds itself moving forward without any ethical oversight. Civil society watchdogs, meanwhile, warn of “a dangerous acceleration” of AI deployments that could erode privacy and civil liberties faster than regulators can respond.
On a positive note, Trump’s Justice Department has continued antitrust suits against major tech players like Google and Meta. This has been good to see, assuming the administration is not using its prosecution as a bargaining chip to aide the administration in some other way.
Perhaps most alarmingly, Trump has turned to the digital asset space, but not to regulate it. He has launched Trump-branded NFTs, endorsing crypto donations to his campaign. These ventures allow the president to generate revenue directly from supporters that are impossible to trace and regulate. This creates serious conflicts of interest and paves the way for unmonitored wealth accumulation by Trump, his family, and his inner circle. Imagine being able to take payments from foreign adversaries at anytime for any reason with no tracebility? Never before has such potential corruption been possible, blurring the line between personal enrichment and public duty.
In just three months, Trump has upended the very foundations that helped American tech thrive: global collaboration, ethical innovation, transparent governance, and long-term strategic planning. Now, the industry is being driven by fear, uncertainty, and politically charged interventionism.
Lastly, the administrations’ war on federal support for scientific research and discovery reverses the direction where the U.S. has led scientific and medical discoveries, and created new industries and products. The administration has slashed funding for the National Science Foundation, proposed steep cuts to research divisions within the Department of Energy and Department of Health, and froze grants supporting vital research in universities. Climate science, clean tech, computing, and biomedical research have all seen critical funding eliminated. In an era where national security and economic competitiveness hinge on discovery, these cuts may prove to be the most self-defeating of all.
This has been 100 days where Trump has made an impact as he promised, but we are less better off than we were when it comes to technology.