When President Trump announced sweeping tariffs this week, some of the biggest tech companies had obvious reasons for worry.

Apple, Dell, Oracle — which rely on hardware and global supply chains that are in the direct line of fire from tariffs — saw their shares go into free-fall. But there was another big tech company whose stock took a pummeling even though its core business has little to do with hardware: Meta.

Shares of the company, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, fell $52 to $531.62 on Thursday and were down again on Friday. In total, Meta shed a whopping 9 percent of its market capitalization on Thursday.

The reasons for Meta’s slide are less obvious. But close watchers of the social networking and metaverse company know it is just as vulnerable to Mr. Trump’s trade actions as some of its Silicon Valley peers, even if the details are more complicated. Here’s why.

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