Trump hosts Apple CEO as big tech leaders continue outreach to president-elect

Trump invited Apple CEO Tim Cook for dinner at Mar-a-Lago to discuss EU tax disputes.

Donald Trump hosted Apple CEO Tim Cook for a Friday evening dinner at the president-elect's Mar-a-Lago resort, reports Bloomberg. 

Donald Trump hosted Apple CEO Tim Cook for a Friday evening meal at the president-elect's Mar-a-Lago resort(AFP )

Cook is the most recent in a line of high-profile tech executives who have attempted to make amends with the new president following tense interactions with Trump during his first term, including Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, and Sam Altman of OpenAI.

Trump claims to have discussed the company's ongoing tax disputes with the EU with Cook.

The meeting takes place less than two months after Trump claimed to have had a phone conversation with Cook and shortly after Apple lost its final appeal in a dispute with the EU over unpaid taxes to Ireland of 13 billion euros ($14.34 billion, according to Bloomberg.

In an October interview with podcaster Patrick Bet-David, Trump recounted his chat with Cook: "He said the European Union has just fined us $15 billion." "Then on top of that they got fined by the European Union another $2 billion."

The EU highest court's ruling was the culmination of a battle based on sweetheart deals Dublin was making to entice multinational corporations with low tax rates throughout the 27-nation union. In 2016, the European Commission declared that Ireland had illegally given Apple help that Ireland needed to repay.

Neither representatives for Trump nor Apple immediately responded to requests for comment.

Friday’s dinner is on the heels of other tech leaders traveling to Palm Beach to speak with Trump: a November dinner with Meta Platforms Inc.’s Mark Zuckerberg and a meeting with Alphabet Inc.’s Sundar Pichai on Thursday. Trump also said he plans to meet with the billionaire founder of Amazon.com Inc. Jeff Bezos next week.

Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, announced Friday that he intends to personally donate $1 million to Trump's inaugural fund. This Monday, Amazon and Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta announced that they had each contributed $1 million to Trump's inauguration fund.

Trump attacked Bezos's company, Amazon, and the political coverage at The Washington Post throughout his first term. Bezos, however, has taken issue with some of Trump's earlier statements. Amazon also claimed in a 2019 lawsuit that Trump's anti-business sentiment hurt the company's prospects of landing a $10 billion Pentagon contract.

Trump’s policies and rhetoric may clash with Apple’s public positions, but the company has had an antagonistic relationship with President Joe Biden’s administration. Apple was sued by the Justice Department in an antitrust case that might drag on for years, and mounting regulatory scrutiny around the world is threatening its operations.

Bezos has adopted a more accommodative stance in more recent times. He endorsed the president-elect's intentions to reduce regulations and expressed optimism about Trump's second term last week at The New York Times' DealBook Summit in New York.

Only a few weeks after Meta CEO Zuckerberg had a private meeting with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, Meta made the gift.

Zuckerberg expressed a more favourable opinion of Trump throughout the 2024 campaign, although he did not support any presidential contender. He commended Trump's response to his initial assassination attempt earlier this year.

Trump for his second term is again vowing to impose sweeping new tariffs, including a 10-20% across-the-board tariffs on all foreign goods and levies as high as 60% on Chinese products. The vast majority of Apple’s iPhones are made in China, even as the company has sought to shift manufacturing to other locations in recent years.

"We look forward to engaging with you and your administration to help ensure that the United States continues to lead with and be fuelled by ingenuity, innovation, and creativity," the CEO of Apple said on social media immediately after Trump's election victory in November.

In the past, Trump has chastised Apple for ignoring demands from law enforcement to create a backdoor into the operating system of its phones that would enable a user to access data without a password. During his campaign, Trump urged Apple to help federal authorities crack the phones of two individuals who are suspected of planning murder attempts against him.

Neither Cook nor Apple, which doesn’t have a political action committee, donated at the federal level in the 2024 election cycle, Federal Election Commission records show. Employees of Apple gave $4.6 million, with Democratic candidates receiving 94.8% of that amount, according to OpenSecrets.