//////Tim cook Donald Trump\\\\\\

 The trade war between the United States and China has the biggest tech companies worried about whether tariffs could cut into their bottom lines. But one company was able to thread the needle between a volatile American president and the world's biggest consumer market. More than any other tech leader, AppleCEO Tim Cook has spent a lot of time charming the Trump administration, and it seems to be paying off. President Donald Trump and Cook'srelationship started after Trump's election win in 2016. Donald Trump took a few shots apple during the campaign, but as soon as he was elected, he toldThe New York Times in an interview, one of the people who called to congratulate him was with Tim Cook.

This is Kif Leswing, Tim Cook'soffice reaching out to Donald Trump, you know, saying congrats on being the president. I hope we can work together, kind of stuff. That's how the relationship started. So after Trump's win, he called the CEO's of several tech companies to meet at Trump Tower. Apple CEO Tim Cook was one of them. President Trump pulled together a lot of business leaders with a surprising number of high-tech leaders there This is Jeff Sonnenfeld. He's a senior associate dean for leadership study at Yale University's School of Management. They all came. He wasn't yet president. He is president-elect. Most didn't know him. Very few supported him. And that's true of the U.S. business community in general, not just Silicon Valley types. They still came, which was interesting. Tim Cook used that as an opportunity to start to forge a relationship. In a message to Apple employees, Cook explained why he showed up to talk to trump despite supporting Hillary Clinton. According to TechCrunch, Cook wrote, 'he never found being on the sideline a successful place to be.' And, 'the way that you influence these issues is to be in the arena.' Since the meeting, Cook continued to cultivate close ties with Trump and his family. The Apple CEO met with Trump over dinner at his New Jersey golf course twice since 2017.

He's attended state dinners hosted by the president and he has a good relationship with the Ivanka and Melania, according to White House officials. President Trump likes to break bread with people and he relaxes over food and other people relax over food. So it's food and the golf course and those kinds of scenes that are ways that you get away from wearing the formal uniforms and get off the pillars of office. In February 2019, Cook joined the American Workforce Policy Advisory Board, a group dedicated to getting the unemployed into the workforce. And since 2017, Cook has been a part of the White House Office of American Innovation, a group focused on improving quality of life and spurring job creation. The boards are led by Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. Cook and Ivanka Trump even traveled to an Idaho elementary school last November for a photo-op. Apple had donated iPads to all the teachers and students in the district. This is TimCook working a personal relationship with Trump. And as different issues unfolded, when Tim Cook wants to take a different position, say, on climate change or immigration policies, he'll give a heads up alert to the White House. And he'll often do that through Ivanka Trump or more often through Jared. But so far as Iknow, there are no remote financial arrangements behind this. Apple claims it doesn't engage in politics and it doesn't have a PAC, something Cook has said shouldn't exist.

Most companies in Silicon Valley spend quite a bit more informal lobbying, whereas Apple spends very little informal lobbying. It has more than the personal diplomacy rather than the K-Street bandit is working over the White House. Nevertheless, Cook keeps in touch with Trump, making calls, and scheduling meetings when appropriate. So he has Trump's ear when government policy collides with Apple's corporate interests. The president says that Apple CEO TimCook is a great executive, at least in part because Cook calls him on the telephone. The only one that calls me is Tim Cook. He calls me whenever there's a problem. He'll call. That influence is about to be put to the test as Apple applies for exclusions from anew round of tariffs. Big American companies are caught in a catch 22 when it comes to China. First, the United States has about three hundred twenty-nine million people. That makes it the third most populous country on earth. China has about 1.3 billion people. That means to keep growing, most American companies need access to Chinese consumers, and for companies that rely on manufacturing, the situation is even more thorny. It's often cheaper to make or assemble products in China and then ship them to a state like Ohio than it is to make those products in Ohio in the first place. President Donald Trump's trade war puts those companies in a tight spot. In summer 2017, Trump unleashed tariffs on billions of Chinese imports. Now, after more than a year of back and forth tariffs between the U.S. and China, companies making consumer tech hardware, like Apple, are going to get hit with tariffs if the U.S. and China can't close on a new trade deal. So Apple has become the poster child for the trade war for two main reasons. One, they get a substantial amount of their sales from mainland China. So as a market and having access to the market, that is critical for Apple. But there's a double whammy here because Apple also does the majority of its production in China as well. And through its production partners, including Foxconn, you know, they employ millions of people in China. New tariffs went into effect on September1st, 2019 in that hit some Apple products.

And now Apple is asking the administration for exclusions from that round of tariffs. But in the meantime, theUnited States Trade Representative Office has also already delayed some of the tariffs on certain consumer items until December 15th. 2019. The delay included cellphones, computers, video game consoles, some clothing products, and certain toys, which Trump said was decided to help consumer spending during the holiday season. For Apple, the December 15th tariffs mean a 15 % tax on Chinese imports, which would force Apple to either raise prices or accept lower margins on core products sold in the U.S.- Think iPhones and MacBooks. They're very anxious that they get a carve-out if there are tariffs against products produced in China because that's where most of the Apple phone production is still. They have very effectively explained to President Trump that he would be helping Samsung. The federal government now has to decide whether Apple gets another tariff exemption on core products. Cook has already appealed to Trump, even though the decision will be made by a trade representative. Tim was talking tome about tariffs. And, you know, one of the things that he made a good case is that Samsung is the number one competitor and Samsung is not paying tariffs because they're based in South Korea. And it's tough for Apple to pay tariffs if they're competing.

Now, the problem was that Samsung, a competitor, good competitor, wouldn't be paying tariffs and Tim Cook would have got to help him out short -term with that problem because it's a great American company. Samsung is in South Korea. Not fair. At the beginning of the trade war, Apple seemed confident it could avoid tariffs. In a June 2018 interview, Cook said he didn't believe the iPhone would get hit. The New YorkTimes reported his confidence came from the assurances within the Trump administration. If you listen to what Tim Cook has to say about the whole U.S.-China trade relations, he is very carefully dancing around that core topic of saying, look, these two economies are intricately linked together. We have to come to a resolution. This is not good for China or the U.S., which is good for Samsung, which has its production elsewhere in Asia. But the December 15th tariffs could be worse for Apple. Apple needs to protect that supply chain in China in addition to just selling iPhones there. When Trump signed his tax reform bill in December 2017, Apple repatriated hundreds of billions in overseas cash and a lower tax rate, saving the company an estimated27 billion dollars in taxes.

A month later, Apple announced its plans to pay thirty-eight billion dollars in taxes. Apple detailing how to accelerate its pace of U.S. investments and job creation, saying it's going to make a 350 billion dollar contribution to the U.S. economy over the next five years. Trump got wind of Apple's plans and tweeted on January 17th, 2018. I promised that my policies would allow companies like Apple to bring massive amounts of money back to the United States. Two weeks later, Trump cited Apple in his first State of the Union speech. Apple has just announced it plans to invest a total of three hundred and fifty billion dollars in America and hire another twenty thousand workers. Besides one small factory in Ireland, Apple doesn't own and operate any of its manufacturing. Instead, it contracts with manufacturers who assemble the company's products and most of them are in China. Tim Cook has been the architect of, under Steve Jobs his era, of taking manufacturing out of the U.S. and outsourcing it to China, to Foxconn and others in China. Foxconn, of course, which is a Taiwanese company, but it's located so much of the manufacturing in the mainland. Meanwhile, Trump has focused on getting Apple to make its products in the U.S. He's always been about American manufacturing, so he's criticized Apple a few times over its practice of doing the vast majority of its manufacturing in China. You got to start doing it over here. And you have.

I mean, you've put a big investment in our country. We appreciate it very much. Trump telling The Wall Street Journal that Apple CEO Tim Cook has committed to building three big manufacturing plants here in the U.S. Earlier this year, Apple announced a new version of the Mac Pro. In September, the company announced it would assemble them in Austin, Texas after it received tariff exemptions on10 of the 15 parts it needed to assemble the machine. Cook said in a statement we thank the administration for their support enabling this opportunity. Steve Jobs would have been a horrible CEO at this moment because think about what he would have to deal with kowtowed to both Beijing and Trump. Can you picture in a million years Steve Jobs threading the needle in the way that Tim Cook has? He is in a position where Chinese carriers are the lifeline for his business in the second-biggest economy in the world. And they manufacturer a lot of phones there. He has to live with that reality while simultaneously convincing Mad Dog Trump that he's going to hire more people and build more things here. And he's done it incredibly well. Like, could you imagine SteveJobs pulling that off? I really can't. So maybe what was needed right now is not this beacon of innovation. Maybe it's competence and logistical savvy and calmness. And that is what TimCook has brought to the table. That's why he's added about six hundred billion dollars in market cap to this company. Cook, for the most part, has been able to steer away from Trump's public attacks.

President tweeted about his new iPhone quote to Tim, The button on the iPhone was far better than the swipe. Despite Trump's iPhone critique, Sonnenfeldsays Cook has found the perfect combination when it comes to his relationship with President Trump. Well, it's a perfect recipe for Apple. I don't know that it's a perfect recipe for the nation, but it works for him. What Cook does is he retains a seat at the table. He presses, you know, what he thinks he is or what Apple's point of view on the policy is. And, you know, on those on the stuff that he disagrees with Trump, he makes his point known on that. He's issued companywide memos on the Paris Accords and various immigration-related policy moves from the Trump administration. But he never makes it personal. There was an opportunity to humiliate the president in one of these advisory council meetings. You may remember he turned to TimCook and referred to him as Tim Apple. We appreciate it very much, Tim Apple. And then on his Twitter iconic Tim Cook replaced his name with an apple. Now that was ambiguous. There are ways where you could see that he was maybe having a little bit of a spoof with the president, but the president and others could see that he was making fun of himself and somehow it diffused the situation pretty effectively.

In part because of situations like this, Cook has cultivated what Sonnenfeld calls personal respect, and that's what has helped him avoid negative criticism from the president. Tim Cook was quick to see that he doesn't want to be on the wrong side of public attacks from President Trump. And there must be a way you can talk with him privately when you have issues. And he's found that pipeline both through one-on-one discussions, not using collective action, not using lobbyists, but President Trump, the personal respect is very important to him, and he'll show that respect. To cultivate that personal respect, Cook has met with Trump face-to-face, which Sonnenfeld says is how Trump prefers to do business. He likes to meet in person, and he has a, despite the anger at these rallies and the language that's used and what people will talk about the divisiveness, on one-on-one sessions. He can be disarmingly charming and he knows that. And Tim Cook responds to that. I don't know how charming Tim Cook is, but I think he's a very good listener and he doesn't have a personal agenda. There's no grandiosity or egomania of Tim Cook.