A listing of varied associated information objects and clips from this, and up to date, weeks:
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Apple Newsroom, on Wednesday — “Apple Will increase U.S. Dedication
To $600 Billion, Declares American Manufacturing Program”:Apple immediately introduced a brand new $100 billion dedication to America, a
important acceleration of its U.S. funding that now totals
$600 billion over the following 4 years. At present’s announcement
consists of the bold new American Manufacturing Program (AMP),
devoted to bringing much more of Apple’s provide chain and
superior manufacturing to the U.S. By way of AMP, Apple will
enhance its funding throughout America and incentivize world
corporations to fabricate much more vital elements within the
United States. -
Individually, additionally from Apple Newsroom Wednesday — “Apple and Corning Accomplice to Manufacture 100 P.c of iPhone and Apple Watch Cowl Glass in Kentucky”:
Apple and Corning immediately introduced a serious growth of their
long-standing partnership to make precision glass for Apple
merchandise. Apple is making a brand new $2.5 billion dedication to provide
the entire cowl glass for iPhone and Apple Watch in Corning’s
Harrodsburg, Kentucky, manufacturing facility. Because of this 100
p.c of the duvet glass on iPhone and Apple Watch models offered
worldwide will likely be made within the U.S. for the primary time.Corning is creating the world’s largest and most superior
smartphone glass manufacturing line on the Harrodsburg facility.
Corning will now dedicate this complete facility to manufacturing
for Apple, which can assist enhance Corning’s manufacturing and
engineering workforce in Kentucky by 50 p.c. -
From contained in the Oval Workplace on Wednesday afternoon, a 3.5-minute video of Trump’s introductory remarks, then Tim Cook dinner giving Trump a trophy of kinds, with an Apple-logo high produced from glass produced on the Corning facility in Kentucky, and a base produced from pure gold (maybe left over from Apple’s decade in the past foray into $20,000 “Version” Apple Watches?).
This video is without doubt one of the most pathetic issues I’ve ever witnessed, for everybody concerned. (Be aware Cook dinner’s awkward laughter when Trump, after claiming that “about $17 trillion is coming into the USA” due to the brilliance of his financial statecraft, quips “That’s even some huge cash for you”, Cook dinner.)
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From the identical press occasion within the Oval Workplace, a 5-minute video of Cook dinner’s benign however obsequious ready remarks.
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Apple’s inventory, as I sort this after the shut of markets on Friday, is up 11.6 p.c for the week, and jumped over 5 p.c instantly after Wednesday’s bulletins.
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Tripp Mickle, reporting for The New York Instances again on Could 26, underneath the headline “Tech’s Trump Whisperer, Tim Cook dinner, Goes Quiet as His Affect Fades”:
Within the run-up to President Trump’s current journey to the Center East,
the White Home inspired chief executives and representatives of
many U.S. corporations to hitch him. Tim Cook dinner, Apple’s chief
government, declined, mentioned two individuals acquainted with the choice.
The selection appeared to annoy Mr. Trump. As he hopscotched from
Saudi Arabia to the United Arab Emirates, Mr. Trump took a quantity
of pictures at Mr. Cook dinner.Throughout his speech in Riyadh, Mr. Trump paused to reward Jensen
Huang, the chief government of Nvidia, for touring to the Center
East together with the White Home delegation. Then he knocked Mr.
Cook dinner. “I imply, Tim Cook dinner isn’t right here however you might be,” Mr. Trump
mentioned to Mr. Huang at an occasion attended by chief executives
like Larry Fink of the asset supervisor BlackRock, Sam Altman of
OpenAI, Jane Fraser of Citigroup and Lisa Su of the semiconductor
firm AMD.Later in Qatar, Mr. Trump mentioned he “had a bit of downside with
Tim Cook dinner.” The president praised Apple’s funding within the
United States, then mentioned he had advised Mr. Cook dinner, “However
now I hear you’re constructing throughout India. I don’t need you
constructing in India.”On Friday morning, Mr. Trump caught a lot of his personal
administration and Apple’s management off guard with a social
media submit threatening tariffs of 25 p.c on iPhones
made wherever besides the USA. The submit thrust Apple
again into the administration’s cross hairs a bit of over a month
after Mr. Cook dinner had lobbied and gained an exemption from a
145 p.c tariff on iPhones assembled in China and offered within the
United States. -
April 2018: Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman met with Tim Cook dinner in Cupertino, together with a tour of Apple Park. From a Kif Leswing report for Enterprise Insider relating to the tour:
The younger prince, also known as MBS, was on a appeal
offensive, in response to The New York Instances. His purpose was
to vary the Western perspective of Saudi Arabia as a
conservative nation depending on oil cash the place ladies are
handled as second-class individuals. As an alternative, Prince Mohammed desires
People to see Saudi Arabia as a contemporary nation with intensive
investments in development markets like know-how. -
October 2018: Washington Put up columnist Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident and public critic of the Saudi regime, was brutally assassinated — actually chopped to items — contained in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. Inside weeks, the CIA concluded that Mohammed bin Salman had ordered the assassination. Tim Cook dinner has not met with MBS since.
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President Trump, on the US-Saudi Funding Discussion board in Could — one cease amongst a number of on the Center East tour, which, per level #6 above, Tim Cook dinner declined to attend — was effusive in his reward and admiration for bin Salman. Per ABC Information:
President Donald Trump spent the majority of what was billed as a
“main overseas coverage tackle” to stipulate his imaginative and prescient for the
Center East as an alternative touting his home insurance policies and heaping
reward on Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman whereas talking at
the U.S.-Saudi Funding Discussion board on Tuesday.4 years after the U.S. intelligence group report was
launched that concluded that the crown prince authorised the
assassination of Washington Put up journalist Jamal
Khashoggi, Trump lauded the crown prince for his management
and friendship.“He’s your biggest consultant, biggest consultant. And
if I didn’t like him, I’d get out of right here so quick. You already know that,
don’t you? He is aware of me nicely. I do — I like him lots. I like him
an excessive amount of. That’s why we give a lot, ? An excessive amount of. I like
you an excessive amount of,” Trump mentioned whereas talking in Saudi Arabia. -
Trump, this week, on the White Home occasion with Tim Cook dinner, per CNBC:
“We’re going to be placing a really giant tariff on chips and
semiconductors,” Trump mentioned within the Oval Workplace on Wednesday
afternoon.“However the excellent news for corporations like Apple is in the event you’re constructing
in the USA or have dedicated to construct, with out query,
dedicated to construct in the USA, there will likely be no cost.
So in different phrases, we’ll be placing a tariff on of roughly
100% on chips and semiconductors. However in the event you’re constructing within the
United States of America, there’s no cost.” […]However specifics in regards to the plan, comparable to how a lot U.S. manufacturing
an organization must do with a purpose to qualify for the tariff
exemption, weren’t instantly clear.
There’s, after all, no want to attend for “specifics in regards to the plan”, which just about actually gained’t ever be put in writing. Everyone knows the best way to qualify for an exemption — it’s as much as the whims of Trump. Thumbs up, you’re exempt. Thumbs down, you pay.
So, what to make of Cook dinner’s obsequious reward for Trump and gifting of an Apple-branded gold trophy? Your take could be that Cook dinner is just now a Trump supporter. Or, your take could also be that consuming an enormous shit sandwich like this, proper within the Oval Workplace, is just what Cook dinner “has to do”.
My take stays someplace within the center, however nearer to the latter than the previous. Did Cook dinner have to do that? No. May the announcement that Apple was accelerating its funding plans for US manufacturing from $500 billion to $600 billion merely have been made through a press launch on Apple Newsroom, quite than a made-for-TV press occasion within the Oval Workplace? Sure.1
However Cook dinner, and Apple, want to select their battles. To me, what’s apparent is the ability dynamic. We’re not used to contemplating Apple, a $3 trillion firm, as subservient in any relationship. However the US federal authorities dwarfs even the largest of corporations, and Trump is wielding the powers of the manager department and the bully pulpit of the presidency in unprecedented methods. Flagrantly unlawful and unethical methods, however nonetheless, he’s wielding these powers. No firm, irrespective of how massive, can stand as a examine or stability to that energy.
It’s not even a case of “kiss the ring and obtain preferential therapy”. It’s extra a case of “kiss his ass or else you’ll face punishment”. Trump, like a perverted Santa Claus, retains solely two lists: naughty and good. Cook dinner and Apple received a style of that after Cook dinner declined to take part in Trump’s Center East tour, main Trump to reflexively declare new tariffs on iPhones assembled in India. Trump supplied one other style when he introduced this week, with Tim Cook dinner within the room, the supposed one hundred pc tariffs on pc chips for corporations who aren’t enjoying ball. (I say supposed as a result of the TACO speculation, up to now, has panned out.)
Faulting Cook dinner for enjoying ball and kissing Trump’s ring (amongst different issues) is like faulting a neighborhood enterprise for paying right into a safety racket — one by which the cops are complicit, and the entire rip-off exists on the behest of a crooked mayor. Ethical rectitude can really feel good, however not a lot when the cops are burning your retailer to the bottom. There isn’t a authority to enchantment to for assist when the best workplace within the nation is working the safety racket.
I don’t know what would occur to Apple in the event that they merely refused to play ball with any of this in any respect. Focused spiteful tariffs, bogus investigations by the Justice Division, private vilification in MAGA media. May Apple climate such a storm, financially, with its head held excessive? In all probability. However to what impact? It wouldn’t change the sport. The sport is at present shamelessly corrupted.
Did Cook dinner’s Oval Workplace show of fealty and his grotesque golden present make you are feeling one thing? Did it engender an emotional response? Grossed out, maybe? Slightly sick? Offended? Offended? Me too. However did you are feeling good — reassured? proud? — when Cook dinner skipped that Center East Trump tour in Could? You already know, the one which ranged from Trump singing the praises of the murderous Mohammed bin Salman (“I such as you an excessive amount of”) to accepting as a present (that he claims will wind up within the possession of his post-presidential “library”) a 747 luxurious jet from Qatar.
In case you select to imagine that Tim Cook dinner is weak, unethical, grasping, and even — regardless of his long-professed heroes — secretly a MAGA supporter, there’s doubtless nothing I can say to disabuse you of the notion. You may’t show a detrimental. However I might argue that that line of cynicism is the simple manner out. That you simply’re taking consolation in directing your ire at Cook dinner, and the notion that if Cook dinner had extra spine he’d refuse to play this recreation. It’s comforting to imagine it’s him and his ilk, grasping egocentric billionaires, not us as a collective entire.
It’s disturbing to suppose that the chief of a beloved, trusted, and extensively believed-to-be-ethical firm like Apple has succumbed to avarice. That Tim Cook dinner feels no qualms about — or even perhaps delights in — collaborating in a quid-pro-quo-driven corrupt administration by which flattery, fealty, presents, and barely-concealed bribes are rewarded. That the USA devolving into kleptocracy fits Tim Cook dinner simply advantageous, as a result of Apple’s pockets are deep sufficient to pay the vig.
However the different is extra disturbing.
What if Tim Cook dinner is, actually, robust, proud, and pushed by a eager sense of ethical and moral readability? Maybe Cook dinner declined Trump’s invitation to hitch his Center East entourage in Could solely as a result of he was in any other case busy. However I imagine there are bridges he is not going to cross — and that journey, particularly its implicit and specific reward and sanctification of the Saudi regime basically, and MBS specifically, was one in all them. The entire journey was grotesque, and made a mockery of conventional American values.
US manufacturing, alternatively, is some extent of real alignment between Trump’s needs and Apple’s pursuits and ethics. Emphasizing that alignment in an Oval Workplace occasion, strong gold trophy in hand, is gross, sure, however by no means a corruption of something Cook dinner believes to be within the real pursuits of Apple or the nation. Take into account the chance that, removed from being snug together with his present and obsequious ring-kissing this week, Cook dinner was as discomfited by it as anybody. That he’s keenly conscious that belief and status are solely accrued slowly, however are at all times vulnerable to being squandered rapidly, and that this is applicable each to how he’s perceived personally and the way Apple is perceived as an establishment — a pillar of American ingenuity and trade. His life’s work. And that regardless of all of that, Cook dinner concluded that debasing himself, promoting some shares of his personal dignity, was the perfect plan of action — for Apple, for Apple’s prospects (and, sure, shareholders), and even perhaps for the nation. That ruthless practicality is critical merely to remain afloat in a sea of abject graft, extortion, and cronyism. That’s darkish. That requires contemplating that the issue isn’t the greed of some billionaires and executives who ought to withstand burgeoning corruption, however that Trump and his sycophants within the Republican Social gathering have already succeeded in corrupting the system. That the corruption isn’t taking place, however occurred. The US isn’t heading for existential bother. We’re in it — and a pathway out shouldn’t be but clear. That’s to not say all is eternally misplaced, however that we’re, in our present political second, past the purpose the place the sport will be performed efficiently on the extent. You may select to play a crooked recreation straight, however you may’t win. Enterprise is competitors. A loser who performed above reproach continues to be a loser. You might want to select your battles. US manufacturing is Cook dinner’s selection.
The White Home has lengthy been referred to as the Individuals’s Home. The embarrassment of this week’s Oval Workplace bending of the knee isn’t Cook dinner’s or Apple’s alone. It’s a humiliation for our whole nation. It’s not him. It’s not them. It’s us.
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Additionally value noting: Apple’s funding plan for US manufacturing is essentially in step with their $430 billion plan 4 years in the past on the outset of the Biden administration, and is probably going what they’d be committing underneath a hypothetical Harris administration or second Biden time period. Apple’s technique hasn’t wavered on this entrance; solely the fanfare has. ↩︎
