Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said he’s willing to work with President-elect Donald Trump to dismantle government regulations that hinder economic growth.
The U.S. imposes “excessive permitting and regulation,” Bezos said, speaking at the New York Times’ DealBook Summit in New York City on Wednesday. “We need a growth orientation in this country.”
The day after the election, Bezos congratulated Trump “on an extraordinary political comeback and decisive victory.”
“I’m actually very optimistic this time around,” Bezos said of Trump at the DealBook conference. “He seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulation. If I can help him do that, I’m gonna help him.”
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Bezos shared his current impressions of Trump: “What I’ve seen so far is he is calmer than he was the first time [in the White House] and more settled.”
Regarding Elon Musk, who is a rival of Bezos’ and has become a top adviser to Trump, Bezos said he did not think Musk would misuse his influence with the incoming administration to harm competitors. “I’ve had a lot of success in life by not being cynical,” said Bezos.
Bezos also addressed the major backlash he stirred among Washington Post readers when he decreed — less than two weeks before the U.S. presidential election — that the newspaper would not endorse a candidate this year. Bezos acquired the Washington Post in 2013.
At the DealBook Summit, Bezos said, “We just decided [an endorsement] wasn’t… going to influence the election one way or the other.” He added, “The pluses of doing this were very small.” Bezos said it would have been better if he’d had the “prescience” to have made the change two years ago rather than shortly before the 2024 election, but that he was nevertheless “proud” of the decision.
Former Washington Post editor Marty Baron had called the non-endorsement “cowardice, with democracy as its casualty.” Bezos commented that the decision “was far from cowardly because we knew there would be blowback, and we did it anyway.”
Bezos acknowledged that he’s a “terrible” owner of Washington Post because there are continuous questions of conflicts with Bezos’ interests in Amazon and aerospace company Blue Origin. But, he added, when the Post needs “financial resources, I’m available. I’m like the doting parent in that regard.” Bezos had previously written in a Washington Post op-ed that he was aiming to restore consumers’ trust in the paper by eliminating the practice of political endorsements, which he said “create the perception of bias.”
Bezos, 60, is currently the second-richest person in the world (behind Musk) with an estimated net worth of $234 billion, per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Bezos founded Amazon in 1994 and stepped aside as CEO in 2021; he continues to serve as the company’s executive chairman. He said he always wanted to build a company “that would outlast me… I want Amazon to go off without me.”
At the same time, Bezos continues to be actively involved at Amazon. He said 95% of the time he spends at Amazon is on artificial intelligence and that the ecommerce company is building thousands of different AI applications.
Bezos also is the founder of Blue Origin, which says its mission is to lower the cost and increase the safety of spaceflight. Bezos said flying into space has a “life-changing, transformative” effect. Bezos (like Musk) sees a future where humanity extends beyond Earth. There’s a “strong argument to be made that the Moon is a stepping stone” to the rest of the solar system, he said.
Blue Origin is “not a very good business, yet,” Bezos said. But eventually, he believes it could be bigger than even Amazon: “I think it’s gonna be the best business I’ve ever been involved with.” Bezos said he can fund Blue Origin with his Amazon stock.
In 2022, Bezos pledged to donate most of his wealth to charitable causes within his lifetime. As part of that, he established the Bezos Earth Fund, aimed at fighting climate change, with $10 billion in total grants targeted to be disbursed by 2030.