The US Capitol building. Image source: Visit the Capitol government website
Apple CEO Tim Cook will join other big tech executives at the inauguration as they seek to avoid being targeted by incoming regulation and tariffs.
Different United States presidents call for different tactics. With the incoming administration, gone are the days of sending a few hundred lobbyists to Washington.
Instead, the companies and the CEOs themselves must curry favor from the one in charge.
A new report from Bloomberg states that Apple CEO Tim Cook will join other tech executives like Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos at the inauguration. It follows reporting that Cook donated $1 million of his own money to the inauguration, and so far, Apple has donated none.
Cook and others learned from the first time through with Donald Trump that in-person interactions were the only way to stay on his good side. Of course, these interactions can always backfire, but not playing the game isn’t an option.
Tech regulation has hit a peak with countries around the world scrutinizing everything from Google search to Apple’s App Store. It seems Apple and others hope that all of this press coverage, donations, and compliments will be enough to avoid some of the harsher possibilities during this term.
It isn’t as if tech companies have never done anything like this before, but the scale of the donations is higher and the attention given the donations is clearer. Cook’s donation out of his own pocket has been described as a move to keep Apple out of it, even if the shareholders are proposing otherwise.
Other companies have taken a more straightforward approach to courting the incoming administration. For example, Meta has removed fact-checking, DEI, and many of its safeguards in the name of “free speech,” a klaxon of the party.
Cook has stayed in the background, congratulating Trump on social media, attending a dinner, and not involving Apple directly. It’s all part of a carefully crafted playbook.
It remains to be seen if all of the work put in by Cook and company will squeeze out any results. A rumor denied by the EU suggests that there was at least some pause in levying fines over the DMA because of Trump, and more of that could come.
