The billionaires surrounding Donald Trump at his inauguration suggest who will most benefit from his second term

As Trump delivered his inaugural address, some of the most powerful and wealthy titans in the world watched from the dais.

On the campaign trail, Donald Trump promised to immediately end inflation and to make gas, food, and healthcare more affordable for the middle class.

And in his inaugural address on Monday, Trump pledged to restore “prosperity” to the American public and to fight against “a radical and corrupt establishment [that] has extracted power and wealth from our citizens.”

As he spoke, some of the most powerful and wealthy titans in the world watched from the dais as Trump’s personal guests.

The image of these tech billionaires – including Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, and of course, Elon Musk —  standing front and center suggested who would most benefit from a second Trump term.

These men, who control the world’s communication channels, donated millions to Trump’s inaugural coffers. Musk gave Trump millions of dollars to Trump’s campaign during the election, as well, an effort many Democrats and election observers lamented soon after Trump won. 

“Right now it’s too easy for some mega billionaire to decide he wants to buy a government and then do it,”  NC Rep. Robert Reives, the Democratic leader in the NC House, said in an interview soon after the election in November. 

“Not saying that it has happened, not saying it hasn’t happened, but I’m telling you that is what we’re doing with money and politics is insane,” he said. “I can’t imagine running [for office] 50 years ago and saying, ‘I’m running to make sure that the government never spends another dime on you. We’re going to take your tax money, we’re going to give it to our friends and we’re going to help invest in their companies,’”

Billionaires don’t give political donations for free, in other words; they expect a policy return on their political investment, and those returns often benefit the wealthy at the expense of the middle class and low income residents. 

In this case, those men stand to benefit from Trump’s planned extension of his 2017 tax cuts, which research shows primarily benefited corporations and the wealthiest Americans. 

In contrast, Trump didn’t mention the middle class a single time in his speech, and since winning the election, he’s said he probably wouldn’t be able to bring down grocery prices, after all. 

“I’d like to bring them down. It’s hard to bring things down once they’re up. You know, it’s very hard,” he told Time magazine last month.

Instead, Trump, his advisers, and several of the people he’s nominated for cabinet positions have backed policies that will strip away federal protections for workers, students, and the middle class, and could implement new efforts that could make healthcare, housing, food, and everyday items more expensive.

Trump has promised to raise tariffs across the board, and to raise them 60% on all goods and materials and ingredients coming from China.

A tariff is a tax on foreign goods. But unlike a tax, the countries facing the tariff are not the ones who pay the extra costs. 

That 60% increase, for example, would fall on the US companies that rely on materials from China, it will not fall on China. And those companies, as they always do when costs go up, will just charge more for their goods, which means they become more expensive in the stores, which means the public will pay more money for anything that comes from China.

The same principle applies to any tariffs introduced on goods and materials from Canada and Mexico.

What goods and materials come from China?

Almost surely the phone you’re reading this article on.

Probably the garlic you used to make your family-favorite sauce; ingredients in your cereal; lots and lots of the clothes in your closet.

One estimate shows the total allotment of tariffs Trump has proposed would cost Americans an average of nearly $3000 more a year.