Trump hosts Apple CEO at Mar-a-Lago as big tech leaders continue outreach to president-elect
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Donald Trump hosted Apple CEO Tim Cook for a Friday evening dinner at the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago resort, according to a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to comment publicly.
Cook is the latest in a string of major tech leaders — including OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos — who have sought to improve their standing with the incoming president after rocky relations with Trump during his first term.
Trump has said he spoke with Cook about the company long-standing tax battle with the European Union.
The meeting comes less than two months after Trump said he spoke to Cook by phone, and shortly after Apple lost its latest appeal in a dispute with the EU over 13 billion euros ($14.34 billion) in back taxes owed to Ireland.
“He said the European Union just fined us $15 billion,” Trump recalled of his conversation with Cook in an October interview with podcaster Patrick Bet-David. “In addition, they were fined $2 billion by the European Union. “
The EU Supreme Court’s decision was the culmination of a dispute centered on sweetheart deals Dublin offered to attract multinational companies with minimal taxes in the 27-nation bloc. The European Commission ruled in 2016 that Ireland had granted Apple unlawful aid that Ireland had to reclaim.
Trump’s transition team and Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment about his dinner with Cook.
OpenAI CEO Altman The company plans to make a personal donation of $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund, the company confirmed Friday. Amazon and Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, confirmed this week that they have each donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund.
During his first term, Trump criticized Amazon and railed against political reporting in The Washington Post, which Bezos owns. Meanwhile, Bezos had criticized some of Trump’s past rhetoric. In 2019, Amazon also argued in a lawsuit that Trump’s bias against the company hurt 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 term, while also endorsing the newly elected president’s plans to cut regulations.
Meta’s donation came just weeks later Meta-CEO Zuckerberg met with Trump privately at Mar-a-Lago.
During the 2024 campaign, Zuckerberg did not endorse a candidate for president, but expressed a more positive stance toward Trump. Earlier this year, he praised Trump’s response to his first assassination attempt.