Unlock the White House Watch watch newsletter for free
Your guide on what the US elections of 2024 mean for Washington and Le Monde
Business has made a good deal Faustian with Donald Trump and Elon Musk, his henchman from the so-called Ministry of Government efficiency. The promises of deregulation and tax discounts are so attractive. In reality, business leaders have let extremely raptor foxes enter the chicken coop in a way that they can regret.
Let us put aside the negative economic effects of trade wars, immigrant roundups and geopolitical conflicts, and we focus only on Doge. Many have already been said On the privacy threats of individuals, financial security, health and security which may result from unhindered access to the muscles to the data hosted within a federal agency. Of course, much less has been made threats to business – excluding those who belong to Musk, Trump and their immediate circle. Here, there are several things that would worry me if I was Managing Director.
The first is the unprecedented competitive advantage that Musk could obtain by having access to things such as data from the Ministry of Transport in terms of security, information on the trial of Food and Drug Administration, the owner research of the department agriculture or pre-publication information on patent applications.
If I managed a automotive company like GM or a carpooling company like Uber, I would wonder if Musk obtained information on the autonomous car tests of Tesla competitors. If I was a capitalist in venture capital, I would wonder if he was able to see what new technologies were closest to marketing and how, in order to better pass the potential competitors.
These are just some of the most obvious implications to have an adversary who could potentially access information companies thinking that they only gave government.
Then there are the longer -term competitive advantages that Musk could win by incorporating data sets from different departments in its own artificial intelligence systems. (The White House claims that he does not do this, but there is no evidence on the other side.) “You could possibly create an AI tool to predict innovation models, or do associations , for example, drug tests, “said Suzanne Harrison, the director of Percipience, a consulting firm in intellectual property. As she testified before a Senate subcommittee in 2023, patent data can be used to “visualize the emerging economic and technological battlefields” of the future.
We don’t know exactly what Doge is the mining and how the data is used. This has frustrated the judges examining the myriad of prosecution on its access which was filed against the administration. It is hard to believe that Trump according to which Musk will reject himself from any conflict – consider how he targeted the financial protection office of consumers, which investigated X Money, the peer payment system associated with his social media company.
But the potential negative consequences for companies are not limited to access to unfair information. The elimination of various agencies and the recovery of subsidies have a frightening effect in fields such as energy, transport, manufacturing and housing which were supported by the Biden administration.
The green battery company, Kore Power, moved away from a $ 1.2 billion factory project in Arizona after Trump has drawn loans and clean energy subsidies. Authorizing difficult processes to start is likely to become more possible, as agency staff are reduced. Kate Gordon, the former main advisor of the Energy Secretary under Biden, now CEO of California Forward, a lasting non -profit energy, says that she heard societies in fields like hydrogen, energy nuclear and even rare earth minerals that reconcile investments due to concerns about regulatory uncertainty.
Part of this uncertainty is felt in republican bastions. Like Senator Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat, told the FT last week: “The Doge Bros hurt the red states” where a large part of the Biden stimulus went. “I hear (members of the Congress) say:” Wait a minute – we are doing research on Alabama cancer, and we build cars in Tennessee “.
There is a notable silence on these subjects of republican senators and business leaders. Many people will say in private that they are worried about the techniques of Slash-And-Burn of Doge. But nobody wants to run against Musk or Trump in public for fear of remuneration (indeed, I would say that in my 33 years of journalism, I have never had so many sources that only want to talk about context Let them do it now).
To be fair, some business leaders hope that the zero budgetary approach of Doge, which consists in forcing agencies to justify themselves as business services, will create real efficiency. Others do not want to fall due to employees and consumers, half of whom may have voted for Trump. Many are simply waiting for the legal process to take its course. “Pose low is the dominant tactic at the moment,” said Sarah Bonk, business manager for America, a non -profit membership group of companies wishing to improve the government.
However, she says that she heard members who are worried about the growing risks associated with business in such an uncertain environment and what regulatory chaos means. The chief economist of Apollo, Torsten Slok, raised the question of if the Doge shots and cuts could create a recession last week.
The unilateral private control of the federal government has never been exercised in this way, even by thieves of the 19th century. Measured in relation to such uncertainty, business can come next to its political negotiation.