Apple’s CEO Reveals Details About His Private Meeting with Trump

Apple CEO Tim Cook has revealed details about a private White House meeting he had with President Donald Trump last month.

The meeting, which took place on April 25, was said to be focused “on trade.” During a recent interview on Bloomberg’s “The David Rubinstein Show: Peer-to-Peer Conversations,” Cook divulged several more details about it — including how the discussion ranged from recently imposed tariffs to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

U.S. and China Trade War

Earlier this year, the Trump administration recently instituted 25 percent tariffs on about $50 billion of Chinese-made products. While Cook admitted that established trade policies weren’t perfect, he maintained that the Trump tariffs were also flawed.

“It’s true, undoubtedly true, that not everyone has been advantaged from that — in either country — and we’ve got to work on that,” Cook said. “But I felt that tariffs were not the right approach here, and I showed him some more analytical kinds of things to demonstrate why.”

The Cupertino tech giant assembles most of its consumer products in China, which is also a critical market for the company. Bloomberg notes that Apple has yet to be significantly impacted by the brewing trade tensions between the U.S. and China, however.

On the other hand, Apple has been more in favor of a recent Trump move to slash corporate tax rates. Apple, which has long stashed billions of dollars overseas, is now starting to bring some of that cash home. Over the next five years, Apple will work to invest $350 billion into the U.S. economy through tax payments, hiring, and capital expenditure, Cook told Bloomberg.

Dreamers

Cook also added that he urged the president to find a solution in lieu of the DACA, which shields undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children from deportation.

Legislators have, thus far, failed to materialize any sort of law that could serve as a replacement for the DACA program, which protects some 700,000 so-called Dreamers. “We’re only one ruling away from a catastrophic case there,” Cook said.

In the wake of a Trump-signed executive order last year that would rescind DACA, Apple joined a slew of other tech corporations that penned a letter voicing opposition to the move.

Apple Original TV Content

The Apple chief executive touched upon other topics in the Bloomberg interview, including Apple’s significantly expanding Services business. He also announced that Apple Music has officially reached more than 50 million paid or free trial users.

In addition, Cook said that the Cupertino firm would be making a push into original TV content and online video streaming, but declined to give any further details.

“We are very interested in the content business,” he said. “We will be playing in a way that is consistent with our brand. We’re not ready to give any details on it yet. But it’s clearly an area of interest.”