Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill' Ends up Devastating Former Enemy Facebook's Q3 - Nearly Erases All Net Income - 83 Percent Hit
One of President Donald J. Trump’s biggest former adversaries — Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta — is now paying the price for his economic overhaul. The tech giant reported a staggering $16 billion loss in the third quarter due to tax changes implemented under Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill (BBB) omnibus package signed into law over the summer.
According to Reuters, the new tax structure under the BBB effectively wiped out nearly all of Meta’s quarterly income. The company admitted that the “recognition of a valuation allowance against our U.S. federal deferred tax assets” triggered a one-time, non-cash income tax charge of $15.93 billion — a result of the U.S. Corporate Alternative Minimum Tax provisions.
Without the BBB’s impact, Meta would have reported a net income of $18.64 billion. Instead, the company posted only $2.71 billion, an 83 percent drop, despite posting a healthy 26 percent growth in revenue.
The blow wasn’t just from taxes. Meta’s costs surged 32 percent, largely due to CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s massive investments in artificial intelligence. The company has spent tens of billions trying to compete in an AI arms race it joined late — building sprawling new data centers and betting heavily on what Zuckerberg calls “AI superintelligence.”
“There’s a range of timelines for when people think that we’re going to get superintelligence,” Zuckerberg told analysts during a call. “I think that it’s the right strategy to aggressively front-load building capacity, so that way we’re prepared for the most optimistic cases.”
Despite stock gains earlier this year, Meta shares fell 8 percent after the bell following the earnings announcement.
Industry analysts, however, aren’t counting Meta out just yet. Jeremy Goldman of Emarketer told Reuters that the company’s strategic pivot toward AI monetization could eventually pay dividends.
“After a few years of existential hand-wringing, the company has found its rhythm again by doing what it does best: scaling attention and monetizing it with ruthless efficiency,” Goldman said. “While everyone else is still pitching AI moonshots, Meta has quietly turned AI into margin. Its ad tools are sharper, its targeting smarter, and its short-form video business is finally paying off.”
Still, Wall Street appears uneasy about the short-term impact — and some conservatives see poetic justice in Meta’s financial pain. The company that once banned President Trump from Facebook and Instagram after January 6, 2021, now finds itself squeezed by the very policies signed by the president it tried to silence.
Trump, who signed the BBB into law in July, famously fought back against Big Tech censorship, suing Meta, Twitter, and Google for their coordinated bans. While the suit with Meta was eventually settled, Trump’s permanent move to Truth Social has reshaped the political media landscape.
Meta reinstated Trump’s accounts in early 2023 with so-called “guardrails,” but by then, he had little reason to return. In July 2024, after Trump secured the Republican nomination, Meta quietly removed those restrictions.
“In assessing our responsibility to allow political expression, we believe that the American people should be able to hear from the nominees for President on the same basis,” said Meta’s president of global affairs, Nick Clegg.
Now, the company that once tried to silence the sitting president is watching billions vanish under his administration’s tax plan — a twist that few could have scripted better.