Apple CEO Tim Cook is reportedly personally lobbying U.S. Congressmen and women in an effort to stop antitrust bills targeting Apple.
Emily Birnbaum for Bloomberg News:
Cook has become one of the country’s most politically active tech CEOs in recent years as Apple struggles to fend off antitrust legislation gaining traction in Congress. The company is ramping up its lobbying spending and hiring well-connected former congressional aides. And it’s cozying up to powerful Washington figures, often deploying Cook to make Apple’s arguments directly to lawmakers.
Since the beginning of 2021, Apple has registered three new lobbying shops with ties to key lawmakers in the antitrust fight. It’s also pulling lobbyists directly from the Capitol’s corridors, bringing in-house a former aide to Senator Amy Klobuchar, the Minnesota Democrat leading the fight against Apple and other tech behemoths.
Apple disclosures show that its roster of in-house and outside lobbyists has increased by more than 50%, to 65 from 43, since 2015. Even so, the total number of lobbyists employed by the iPhone maker is lower than that of other major tech companies’ Washington operations, some of which have dozens more…
In the most recent regulatory push, Apple was caught flat-footed. The Obama administration looked the other way as Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon grew into some of the largest and richest companies in history. But in recent years, antitrust scrutiny of the tech giants has spread across the world, traveling from Europe to the U.S.
[Cook] visited Washington at least twice in recent months. In June, when he was spotted in the Senate basement wearing a dark suit and tie, he met with Senator John Tester, the Montana Democrat, and numerous Republican senators, including Minority Whip John Thune of South Dakota, Joni Ernst of Iowa and Missouri Republican Roy Blunt.
First Bill Gates and now Apple’s Tim Cook moving through the Senate basement today pic.twitter.com/AG8E4wLTSG
— K Tully-McManus (@ktullymcmanus) June 9, 2022
MacDailyNews Take: As we often say of Tim Cook’s Apple: Better late than never! Hopefully, Apple’s full court press does some good.
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I see Cook is bringing Apple into politics. Shouldn’t Cook be back at his spaceship office working on the Apple car or Apple Watch or Apple something? Where are all the whiners of MDN when political comments are made on an Apple news blog complaining about the chaste state of things on MDN going askew. I see a new AppleTV+ show is in the offing, titled “Mac interrupted”.
It appears my question has been answered. All day long this post had five five star votes. Checking in at 10:30 pm, the vote increased to fifteen and a two and a half star rating. The whiners have have awakened from their day long slumber. Sweet dreams I trust.
He needs to be lobbying on behalf of Taiwan. If TSMC is destroyed via the CCP invasion of the peaceful democratic nation of Taiwan then AAPL will be hurt most
Cook made his bed in China immediately after NAFTA became law and the giant sucking sound of American jobs lost in favor of greedy profits. Now Apple and the rest of us have to sleep in it and suspect it will get much worse, before it gets better…
??? Tim Cook wasn’t even at Apple when that right to work treaty was passed,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement
Cook didn’t change Apple’s supply chain as much as MDN led you to believe. They once called him a genius and now they hate him. Actually Apple was already outsourcing to China in earnest in the 1990s. Like every other US corporation.
Goeb is too stupid to understand that NAFTA had almost no impact on trade with China. Executives that were interested in short term profits by shuttering US production didn’t save enough for their greedy goals by going to Mexico. In the quest for cheapest possible labor cost and near zero environmental or labor laws, jumped to Asia and then acted surprised when their IP was ripped off instantly. NAFTA was a bigger benefit for trade with Canada, where the US gets much of its lumber.
Fortune 500 execs couldnt accept modestly lower labor costs, come on. They had to go get those executive bonuses. The sucking sounds actually came from China. The Walmartization of America started long before NAFTA. Remember, Roger Stone’s all time favorite crook president opened China for business in 1970.
Cook the mastermind of Apple in China who fine tuned trade to an art form and built the behemoth it is today.
No hate for the man only for some of his actions. Mainly HYPOCRISY and OBSCENE profits at the EXPENSE of human rights.
According to a report three months ago half of the 200 top suppliers of Apple in China are situated in the Covid-19-ravaged region in and around Shanghai. Agree with MDN putting all your eggs in one basket is too much of a risk for Apple long term.
Also, let’s not forget dragging Apple into the woke, SJW political crap Jobs purposely spoke out against and avoided.
“Goeb is too stupid to understand that NAFTA had almost no impact on trade with China.”
FALSE. “jobs were relocated to Mexico, China and other foreign locations as a result of NAFTA.”
“Over the past two decades, currency manipulation by about 20 countries, led by China, has inflated U.S. trade deficits”
“China has become the U.S.’s top trading partner for goods — a development never anticipated at the signing of NAFTA.”
“Since 2001, China’s economy has grown roughly five-fold, adjusted for inflation, and it is now the world’s second largest, behind only the United States.”
NOTE: Jobs hired Cook in March 1998 as senior vice president of WORLDWIDE operations. In November 1995, less than two years after NAFTA was signed — China formally requested membership in WTO.
On December 11, 2001, China officially became WTO’s 143rd member. Official green light Cook built Apple into the world’s first two trillion dollar company, the lion share of profits from Steve’s greatest tech achievement iPhone, made in China continues present day.
Woes for the American worker in brief: “NAFTA undercut the bargaining power of American workers, which had driven the expansion of the middle class since the end of World War II. The result has been over 20 years of stagnant wages and the upward redistribution of income, wealth and political power.”
Yes, NAFTA signed in Dec. 1993 between U.S., Mexico and Canada. However, greatly influenced expanded trade with other countries such as China in absence of signing a formal bilateral free-trade treaty.
To deny NAFTA’s influence on Apple’s trade with China, is well, stupid!…
“ ??? Tim Cook wasn’t even at Apple when that right to work treaty was passed”
Yes, I know all about Cook’s arrival and never said it was the day NAFTA was passed and signed by the Clinton administration…
Suuuuuuure, buddy. You know everything but you still felt the need to attempt an attack on Cook using an irrelevant (ti Apple) North American trade agreement to chastise trade with Chyyyyyna.
Your logic is no more coherent than a Twuump speech. We’re sick of your endless fact-free political attacks , always issued without reference.
Your thinly veiled homophobia can’t be disguised by a claimed dislike of global JIT manufacturing, which every major company does without complaints from you. You’re riled up about nothing.
Not my “buddy” and NO, I don’t know everything, but a helluva lot more than an insult Artist
posting fictitious FALSE accusations.
“We’re sick of your endless fact-free political attacks, always issued without reference.”
Speaking for everyone without their permission, whoa, what an ego. What references, yes, agree you need a lot of help.
“Your thinly veiled homophobia can’t be disguised”
Right, no disguise necessary for a supporter of ALL human rights.
“every major company does without complaints from you.”
We’re talking about supply chain genius Cook who masterminded manufacturing deals in China. Documented by the New York Times slave labor and systemic human rights ABUSES by the ChiComs contributed to make Apple the richest company in history.
Cook the universal HYPOCRITE, turns a blind eye to abuse, agrees to censorship in China and more all in the holy name of the almighty dollar.
Obviously, you have no problem with Cook and CCP abuse…
https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/staff-74