Tech giants spent $50 million lobbying in Trump's swamp last year

Silicon Valley made its distaste for Donald Trump perfectly clear during the 2016 election. But once Trump entered the Oval Office, the tech industry began forking over tens of millions of dollars to woo the White House and skeptical Republicans.

The Valley’s five biggest companies — Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft — collectively spent almost $50 million lobbying the federal government in 2017, according to disclosures first reported by Recode. The figure is a record for the Silicon Valley giants in year that saw major tech companies go out of their way to please Republicans — donating to campaigns, throwing swank parties, and even hiring more conservatives — in order to maintain tech’s eminent position in the Washington D.C. pecking order.

Google spent about $17 million last year, up from $15 million in 2016. Microsoft stayed flat at around $8 million, but Apple nearly doubled its spend from around $4 million to over $7 million. Facebook contributed about $11 million to lobbyists’ coffers, and Amazon gave $13 million — about four times what it spent in 2013.

Though Silicon Valley’s lobbying spend saw an uptick in 2017, it’s generally in line with other major business groups. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce (which includes some tech companies), the National Association of Realtors, and the Business Roundtable, a lobbying group for CEOs, spent over $56 million last year, according to new disclosures reported by Bloomberg.

Tech companies have long publicly patted themselves on the back for being do-gooder, left-leaning corporate actors, but they are straining maintain that posture in the Trump era.

Silicon Valley has bankrolled advocacy organizations on issues like LGBT rights or protecting DACA recipients, but the industry’s biggest political projects in 2017 were fighting off a growing backlash to the power of digital platforms, winning the approval of a number of mega mergers like the $13.7 billion Amazon-Whole Foods deal, and getting the Trump White House’s tax bill through Congress.

Of all three, the tax bill is likely the biggest win for tech giants. Silicon Valley has more money than any other business sector, estimated at nearly $2 trillion in 2016, stashed overseas. And now that money can make its way home as part of a tax holiday that will save tech firms hundreds of billions of dollars.

With the spoils of victory, however, also comes more political pressure. A new antitrust caucus of Democrats in the House of Representatives is taking aim at Google, Facebook, and Amazon. And erstwhile allies in the Democratic party are growing cold feet.

“Democrats and progressives still strongly feel that there are shared values with Silicon Valley, but there is also a real concern over the industry’s increasingly concentrated wealth and power,” Daniel Sepulveda, a former Obama State Department official told the New York Times on Tuesday.

Cover image: U.S. President Donald Trump participates in an American Technology Council roundtable, accompanied by Tim Cook, CEO of Apple (L) and Satya Nadella CEO of Microsoft Corporation at the White House in Washington, U.S., June 19, 2017. (REUTERS/Carlos Barria)