The industry has clashed with the Trump administration at almost every stage of Trump’s presidency: over immigration, trade, net neutrality, and, more recently, social media content moderation. With the election of Biden, some indulgence is expected in the industry. “I think everyone will love this boring presidency, which will be relatively calm. Not the anxiety and chaos that Trump and I experienced every day, ” investor Bradley Tusk recently told Protocol. ” Inconsistency is a problem.”

But things shouldn’t be expected to go back to the blissful days of Barack Obama when the president touted Silicon Valley as a dark spot for the US economy. Too much has changed since then. The election of President Donald Trump in 2016 and subsequent events irrevocably changed the public perception of the tech giants and demanded the attention it deserves from legislators and the public. These checks will not disappear under the Biden administration.

Throughout his campaign, Joe Biden did not rely on the tech industry like Obama, nor did he criticize it like Trump. Therefore, it is difficult to predict what will happen next. Especially in connection with the possible division in the US Congress: Democrats will control the House of Representatives, and the Senate may remain with the Republicans.

But it is already clear that Mr. Biden appears poised to repeal many of Trump’s immigration orders, including restrictions on the entry of highly skilled professionals. Over the course of four years, the Trump administration has added new hurdles to the H-1B visa application and renewal process, resulting in huge delays that have created uncertainty for foreign technical workers, their families, and the companies that employ them. However, Joe Biden promised to increase the number of visas for “permanent immigration at work” and to lift restrictions on obtaining green cards for a number of countries.

Another area: net neutrality and broadband access to the Net. Mr. Biden said he fully supports the Obama-era rules that allowed the FCC to punish companies that try to block, restrict, or force consumers to pay for broadband traffic. Biden also outlined a plan to invest $ 20 billion in broadband infrastructure, but this will require congressional support.

Relief in relations with China is also expected. Joe Biden is going to strengthen cooperation between the United States and China to combat climate change, contain the COVID-19 pandemic, and so on. Experts believe that further aggravation of relations is unlikely, as it was under Donald Trump (for example, in the case of TikTok or Huawei).

Perhaps the biggest unknown for the tech industry that leads the Biden administration is his approach to antitrust issues. Will the new president follow the calls of his party’s progressive wing for dividing up the big tech companies? This is one of the few policy areas around which there is a bipartisan consensus. “There may not be much difference between the antitrust actions of the Trump or Biden administration,” said former FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell, now a partner of Cooley.

If antitrust investigations and legal battles against large tech companies continue, the next 4 years may not be easy for the tech sector (albeit easier than the previous 4).