Apple’s CEO Meets With Trump To Talk Trade

Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, had a meeting with President Donald Trump on Wednesday (April 25) in the Oval Office.

Bloomberg reported that Cook entered the West Wing of the White House before the scheduled 1:45 p.m. meeting, later confirming after the two completed their meeting, the executive met with Larry Kudlow, the president’s lead economic adviser. He also had a meeting with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told Bloomberg the “primary focus and purpose of the meeting is to discuss trade.” She noted the meeting was in the works for several weeks.

The meeting comes amid worries that the U.S. and China will end up in a trade war after Trump announced plans to impose tariffs on billions of dollars’ worth of Chinese products coming into the country. While Apple hasn’t been impacted by the tensions between the countries, it does name China as its third-largest market and manufactures most of its products there. If trade wars ensued, it could start to impact the business of the Cupertino, California technology company.

Ahead of the meeting, Trump tweeted that he was looking forward to meeting with Cook and that the two would talk about “how the U.S. has been treated unfairly for many years, by many countries, on trade,” reported Bloomberg.

Although Cook has been critical of Trump’s immigration policies, he was on board with the tax reform bill that Trump signed into law at the end of 2017, slashing the corporate tax rate and giving companies a tax break when they bring money back into the U.S. from overseas. That prompted Apple to announce it would invest $350 billion in the U.S., open another headquarters in the country and give employees bonuses. Cook was even at Trump’s first state dinner on Tuesday (April 24), bringing along Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice president of government and environment affairs.