Donald Trump hosted Apple CEO Tim Cook for a Friday evening dinner at his Mar-a-Lago resort, according to a source with knowledge of the event who was not authorized to speak publicly.
Cook is the latest in a series of prominent tech leaders, including OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, to engage with the president-elect in an effort to improve relations following a turbulent first term.
Trump previously stated that he had discussed Apple’s longstanding tax disputes with the European Union during talks with Cook.
The meeting comes shortly after a phone call between Trump and Cook less than two months ago and follows Apple’s recent loss in its final appeal over €13 billion ($14.34 billion) in back taxes owed to Ireland.
Speaking to podcaster Patrick Bet-David in October, Trump recalled his chat with Cook: “He said the European Union has just fined us $15 billion.” “Then on top of that, they got fined by the European Union another $2 billion.”
In a lawsuit centered on sweetheart agreements Dublin was proposing to entice multinational corporations with low taxes throughout the 27-nation bloc, and the EU top court’s ruling was the conclusion. According to a 2016 European Commission ruling, Ireland gave Apple illegal help that Ireland had to repay.
An inquiry concerning his dinner with Cook was not immediately answered by Apple or Trump’s transition staff.
The company stated on Friday that Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, intends to personally donate $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund. This week, Amazon and Meta—the parent corporation of Facebook and Instagram—both acknowledged contributing $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund.
Trump attacked Amazon and the political coverage at Bezos’s company, The Washington Post, during his first term. Bezos, however, had taken issue with some of Trump’s earlier remarks. Additionally, Amazon claimed in a 2019 lawsuit that Trump’s prejudice toward the business hurt its prospects of landing a $10 billion Pentagon deal.
Recently, Bezos has adopted a more accommodative stance. He expressed optimism about Trump’s second term last week at The New York Times’ DealBook Summit in New York, where he again endorsed the president-elect’s intentions to reduce regulations.
The Meta donation was made just weeks after CEO Zuckerberg had a private meeting with Trump at Mar-a-Lago.
In the 2024 campaign, Zuckerberg expressed a more favorable opinion of Trump but did not support a presidential candidate. He gave Trump high marks for his response to his initial assassination attempt earlier this year.
