Obama heads west for meeting with Apple CEO Steve Jobs, other tech execs

15 years ago

“President Barack Obama is heading to friendly territory to push his plan to spend billions more on education, meeting with Facebook’s founder and other technology leaders in the San Francisco Bay area and touring Intel Corp.’s semiconductor manufacturing facility in Oregon,” Darlene Superville reports for The Associated Press.

“Obama was meeting business leaders in technology and innovation, including Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg, at a private home in the San Francisco Bay area Thursday,” Superville reports. “Among the other business leaders Obama will meet with are GE chairman Jeffrey Immelt, who Obama recently named head of his Council on Jobs and Competitiveness; Google chief executive Eric Schmidt; and Steve Jobs, the ailing Apple founder who announced last month that he was stepping aside as CEO due to medical issues.”

“Obama is touring Intel Corp.’s semiconductor manufacturing facility in Hillsboro, Ore., on Friday with CEO Paul Otellini… Otellini was among 20 corporate CEOs who met privately with Obama last December in Washington. He has criticized the administration, saying Obama’s policies have caused too much uncertainty for businesses and have not led to job growth or increased consumer confidence,” Superville reports. “Since that meeting, Obama has stressed the role of innovation as a key element of the job-creation agenda he is pursuing as he looks ahead to his re-election campaign next year.”