Trump hosts Apple CEO at Mar-a-Lago as huge tech leaders proceed outreach to president-elect | EUROtoday

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Donald Trump hosted Apple CEO Tim Cook for a Friday night dinner on the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago resort, based on an individual conversant in the matter who was not approved to remark publicly.

Cook is the newest in a string of huge tech leaders — together with OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos — who’ve sought to enhance their standing with the incoming president after uneven relations with Trump throughout his first time period.

Trump has mentioned he has spoken with Cook in regards to the firm’s long-running tax battles with the European Union.

The assembly comes lower than two months after Trump mentioned he spoke to Cook by telephone, and shortly after Apple misplaced its final attraction in a dispute with the EU over 13 billion euros ($14.34 billion) in again taxes to Ireland.

“He said the European Union has just fined us $15 billion,” Trump recalled of his conversation with Cook, in an October interview with podcaster Patrick Bet-David. “Then on top of that they got fined by the European Union another $2 billion.”

The decision by the EU top court was the finale to a dispute that centered on sweetheart deals that Dublin was offering to attract multinational businesses with minimal taxes across the 27-nation bloc. The European Commission in 2016 ruled that Ireland granted Apple unlawful aid that Ireland was required to recover.

Trump’s transition team and Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment about his dinner with Cook.

OpenAI CEO Altman is planning to make a $1 million personal donation to Trump’s inauguration fund, the company confirmed Friday. Amazon and Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, confirmed this week they had each donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund.

During his first term, Trump criticized Amazon and railed against the political coverage at The Washington Post, which Bezos owns. Meanwhile, Bezos had criticized some of Trump’s past rhetoric. In 2019, Amazon also argued in a court case that Trump’s bias against the company harmed its chances of winning a $10 billion Pentagon contract.

More recently, Bezos has struck a more conciliatory tone. Last week, he said at The New York Times’ DealBook Summit in New York that he was “optimistic” about Trump’s second time period whereas additionally endorsing president-elect’s plans to chop laws.

The donation from Meta got here simply weeks after Meta CEO Zuckerberg met with Trump privately at Mar-a-Lago.

During the 2024 marketing campaign, Zuckerberg didn’t endorse a candidate for president, however voiced a extra optimistic stance towards Trump. Earlier this yr, he praised Trump’s response to his first assassination try.