An estimated 175 non-public jets touched down in Solar Valley, Idaho, on Tuesday, kicking off the secretive annual retreat colloquially referred to as “summer season camp for billionaires.”
Lower than per week after Congress handed President Trump’s tax and spending invoice—which specialists venture will lower healthcare advantages for 17 million People, whereas additionally giving tax breaks to the rich and firms—the largest-looming figures in tech, media, and finance have convened in Solar Valley for a closed-door schmoozefest and deal-a-thon.
It’s a gathering that not solely ignores the present nationwide temper felt by many People however stands in opposition to it.
Hosted by Allen & Co., a boutique funding financial institution with tentacles in media and tech, the Solar Valley convention has been a must-attend for powerbrokers since 1983. It’s like Davos minus the press entry, and never even a pretense of addressing international points.
Tectonic plate-shifting offers made at previous retreats embody Disney’s acquisition of ABC in 1995, the AOL-Time Warner merger in 1999, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s buy of The Washington Put up in 2013. Amongst attendees at this yr’s version, which runs from July 8–July 13, are Apple CEO Tim Prepare dinner, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and Ivanka Trump—an eclectic who’s who of the elite’s elite.
Warner Bros Discovery CEO David Zaslav can also be in attendance. Zaslav, you would possibly recall, had maybe probably the most well-circulated quote from final yr’s outing. When a Bloomberg reporter requested him throughout Solar Valley 2024 whether or not he had a desire between Joe Biden and Donald Trump to be the following president, the CEO deflected together with his reply: “We simply want a possibility for deregulation, so firms can consolidate and do what we must be even higher.”
Though his remarks might be learn as an oblique Trump endorsement, since Republicans are inclined to favor deregulation, it’s the phrasing that speaks volumes. It encapsulates the best way wherein among the nation’s strongest figures seem detached to how political choices have an effect on the lives of precise People, and as a substitute appear solely in how they have an effect on enterprise.
This ambivalence is mirrored within the abundance of founders and CEOs who had been as soon as vocally essential of Trump’s insurance policies however later donated to and attended his second inauguration.
It additionally explains why the disconnect between the gilded world of Solar Valley and the truth of individuals reeling from the implications of final yr’s election feels so profound.
Inequality and an unknowable financial system
The 2009 iteration of the retreat, with the worldwide monetary disaster unfurling within the background, was one of many solely instances in current reminiscence when the occasion’s setting could have felt even extra out of step with the general public temper. Throughout that yr’s retreat, a CNBC reporter requested Warren Buffett in regards to the vibe behind the scenes at Solar Valley.
“[I]t’s a troublesome interval,” Buffett replied. “Then again, this film may have ending.”
The reporter pushed for clarification on simply how lengthy that ending would possibly take to reach. Buffett understandably couldn’t reply with any certainty. “I do know the ending can be good,” he mentioned, “however I don’t know whether or not it’s a two-hour film or a four-hour film.
Within the 16 years since, the Solar Valley set did certainly get pleasure from ending.
The 793 billionaires that existed in 2009 then had mixed wealth of $2.4 trillion, whereas the three,000-plus billionaires of 2025 now get pleasure from mixed wealth of $16.1 trillion—a rise of over 570%.
In the meantime, many People had been apparently dwelling in a distinct film.
Center-income households have seen their share of combination earnings shrink from 45% in 2012 to 42% in 2020. As for lower-income People, the federal minimal wage elevated from $6.55 per hour to $7.25 throughout the identical month because the Solar Valley retreat in 2009—and it has not gone up one penny since, regardless of the perfect efforts of labor organizers.
The financial outlook will not be fairly as precarious in 2025 because it was in 2009, however because of Trump’s erratic strategy to tariffs, it feels as unstable as a rickety curler coaster.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell mentioned again in Could that the financial system “could also be coming into a interval of extra unstable inflation and extra common provide shocks,” citing tariffs as the rationale for his hesitation to regulate rates of interest. A majority of People appear to agree with this evaluation. In a late-June ballot from Gallup, across the time that Bezos dropped a reported $20 million-plus on his marriage ceremony with Lauren Sanchez, 72% of residents surveyed mentioned they thought the financial system was both “poor” or “solely truthful,” whereas a comparatively paltry 27% described it as both “good” or “glorious.”
Anti-billionaire animosity
Another excuse this yr’s “summer season camp for billionaires” feels out of step with the nationwide temper is as a result of People have had extreme publicity to billionaires in 2025, and lots of don’t appear notably thrilled with what they’ve seen.
In line with a January ballot, solely 12% of People thought it could be “very or considerably good” for the president to depend on billionaires for recommendation about authorities coverage—and that was earlier than they acquired a style of what it would appear like in apply.
Regardless of working on a populist platform, the president—a billionaire himself, it have to be mentioned—stocked his cupboard with fellow billionaires, and has since delivered this cohort their promised tax cuts.
Earlier than the world’s richest man fell spectacularly out of favor with Trump, the president empowered Elon Musk and his DOGE crew to “scale back waste, fraud, and abuse” all through the federal government. This mandate resulted in 1000’s of federal employees dropping their jobs, varied staffing crises and knowledge breaches, and, because of Musk’s gleeful decimation of USAID, untold devastation and struggling around the globe.
By making himself the sneering face of this effort, Musk turned so unpopular that he impressed a worldwide protest motion. All of the unmistakable hostility directed towards him, nonetheless, is barely a symptom of a broader sentiment.
Judging from the traditionally unfavorable polling of Trump’s just-passed tax invoice—which had a mean internet favorability of -23% in each ballot between Could and July—People are fed up with a system that makes life simpler for the rich and more durable for everybody else.
Though the 2026 midterms are nonetheless a good distance off, voters are already registering their complaints electorally. In final month’s New York mayoral main, as an illustration, voters soundly rejected front-runner Andrew Cuomo, the disgraced former governor, in favor of Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani, who spent a fraction of what Cuomo’s Tremendous PAC put into the race and received anyway.
It is vitally a lot in step with the substance of Mamdani’s marketing campaign that, through the June 29 episode of Meet the Press, the candidate mentioned, “I don’t assume that we should always have billionaires as a result of, frankly, it’s so a lot cash in a second of a lot inequality, and in the end, what we want extra of is equality throughout our metropolis and throughout our state and throughout our nation.”
No surprise billionaires like former mayor and media mogul Michael Bloomberg, hedge fund supervisor Invoice Ackman, and firms like DoorDash poured tens of millions into the race in opposition to him, and tech buyers like Tyler Winklevoss have denounced the individuals’s selection for mayor with excessive prejudice (fairly actually, within the infamous anti-Mamdani posts from Sequoia Capital’s Shaun Maguire).
This actual MCU-style crossover of tech, media, political, and monetary pursuits additionally occurs to comprise the demographic make-up of the Solar Valley retreat.
The epitome of growth-at-all-costs mindset
Within the yr since Zaslav mentioned at Solar Valley that he most well-liked the candidate who would greatest enable firms to “consolidate,” Zaslav’s firm has accomplished the alternative. Warner Bros Discovery introduced final month that it’s going to cut up into two firms—and that Zaslav’s pay can be “considerably diminished.” This regardless of Zaslav’s a lot hoped-for deregulation coming to cross.
Though WBD’s destiny would seemingly have been the identical regardless of who received final November, different media conglomerates may not say the identical.
The July 2024 merger deal between Paramount and Skydance was reportedly the speak of Solar Valley final summer season. Nonetheless, Trump’s handpicked FCC chair has since slowed approval of the merger, creating the looks that it could be contingent on Paramount settling a $16 million Trump lawsuit in opposition to Paramount-owned CBS Information, for alleged “unfair” enhancing in an episode of 60 Minutes final fall.
On July 2, Paramount introduced that it could settle the lawsuit, regardless of authorized specialists dismissing the swimsuit as “meritless and absurd.”
This resolution may set a harmful precedent for press freedom, and should very properly have a direct affect on how People obtain their information going ahead. It’s additionally a sterling instance of growth-at-all-costs mindset—the pernicious power that drives firms to conduct mass layoffs so as to please shareholders, jam AI into each side of client items and providers, and help whichever political candidate guarantees to be greatest for enterprise.
With its cloistered dealmaking by the most important names in tech, finance, and media, Solar Valley is the epitome of growth-at-all-costs mindset.
At another second, it may need been simpler to separate the occasion from all of the political and social turmoil of 2025, however coming so quickly after the signing of Trump’s tax invoice, which is predicted to kick 17 million People off of healthcare whereas giving enterprise capitalists a $17 billion loophole, it’s almost not possible to disregard.
The masters of the universe gathering this week in Idaho don’t appear to care if development in any respect prices finally ends up actually costing every thing—so long as it’s any person else who pays.
