Apple’s CEO Tim Cook has met with President Trump on at least five occasions since his election. So far, those meetings appear to be paying dividends.
Annie Gaus writes for TheStreet:
Tim Cook has long maintained a presence on behalf of Apple in China, given the country’s importance to the tech giant as a supplier and assembler, as well as a significant consumer market. Now he’s increasingly been applying those diplomatic skills on the U.S. side of that relationship as well.
With President Trump now engaged in a long-term tit-for-tat with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, trade relations have proven to be a fluid situation that often seems to change at the drop of a hat, and Cook has proven effective at communicating what Apple has to gain and lose from various policies.
Since Trump’s election in November 2016, Cook has met with Trump on at least five occasions, including two dinners and one private meeting at the White House. Last Friday, the pair met for dinner at Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey to discuss tariffs; Cook has also dined with First Daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, at least once.
MacDailyNews Take: So far, so good, at least as far as AAPL is concerned (albeit being typically undervalued, which is largely a separate issue from U.S.-China trade tensions; it’s more of a failure of analysts and investors to understand the company, treating it as a hardware maker, rather than as an ecosystem provider with incredibly strong margins and exceptional customer satisfaction and resultant loyalty).