Trump set to dine with Apple's Tim Cook at Mar-a-Lago

Stephanie Lai and Nancy Cook, Bloomberg News on Dec 13, 2024

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Donald Trump is meeting with Apple Inc. Chief Executive Tim Cook on Friday, according to people familiar with the matter, the latest in a string of meetings between the president-elect and tech executives.

Cook and Trump will dine at the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, the people said, who requested anonymity to discuss a private meeting.

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.

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

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.

Cook had a warm relationship with Trump during his first term, largely fending off tariff threats after successfully selling him on the idea that additional duties on iPhones would actually benefit a South Korean rival, Samsung Electronics Co.

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.

The Apple CEO was quick to congratulate Trump shortly after his November election win, posting on social media, “We look forward to engaging with you and your administration to help make sure the United States continues to lead with and be fueled by ingenuity, innovation and creativity.”

Trump has criticized Apple in the past for resisting requests from law enforcement to build a backdoor into its phone operating system that would allow authorities to access data without a user’s password. On the campaign trail, Trump called on Apple to assist federal investigators in breaking into the phones of two men accused of plotting assassination attempts on his life.

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.

(Bill Allison and Akayla Gardner contributed to this report.)