Apple's India pivot ignites Trump tension
Tim Cook
once knew how to handle
Donald Trump
. In 2019, the
Apple
CEO gifted the president a $6,000 Mac Pro after Trump lowered tariffs on parts Apple needed from China.
It was a savvy gesture. Trump likes praise, and Cook gave some again more recently, lauding Trump's 'focus on domestic semiconductor manufacturing'.
But the charm may have worn off. Trump grumbled about having 'a little problem with Tim Cook' after learning Apple plans to shift most US iPhone supply to factories in India. 'We are not interested in you building in India,' he added.
Cook can't say as much, but he clearly has a problem of his own. Even after a recent rally, Apple shares are down 14 per cent in 2025, largely due to Trump's China tariffs. Moving iPhone production to the US could triple the price to $3,500, according to Wedbush's Dan Ives.
READ MORE
For now, Cook is keeping quiet. The Mac Pro didn't buy much lasting goodwill.
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Irish Times
an hour ago
- Irish Times
What Trump is doing to US universities is not as bad as the McCarthyite witch trials – it's worse
Some have said the current assault on American universities is the worst since the McCarthyite purges of the 1940s and 1950s. It's actually much worse. McCarthyism targeted individuals with 'Communistic' beliefs, which could include anything left of centre. Donald Trump similarly seeks to stamp out dissent. But his attack is McCarthyism on steroids, attempting to destroy universities as institutions. Trump began by threatening to withhold federal funding from universities that refused his demands. The US spends roughly $60 billion a year on university-based research and development, about half the size of the total Irish governmental budget. Because these funds have already been appropriated by the US Congress, withholding them is illegal. Yet Trump is doing it anyway and daring the courts to stop him. In March, Columbia University, fearful of losing $400 million in federal funding, caved to Trump's demands including surrendering control over its Middle Eastern studies programme. In April, Harvard fought back and has had nearly $2 billion pulled. These funds support all manner of research, and their suspension will have devastating effects on scientific progress, the benefits of which would have been felt far beyond the American borders. Just to take one example, say you or a relative develop Alzheimer's disease: these cuts will delay the search for treatments. More recently, Trump escalated his attack on another key source of university revenue: international students, who make up more than 20 per cent of the student body at most American research universities. Across the country, immigration officers have disappeared international students involved in anti-Israel protests. A haunting video showed one woman, Rumeysa Ozturk, walking near campus, pulled into an unmarked car in broad daylight by masked, plainclothes officers. In some cases, the government has provided no information as to the whereabouts of these students or information as to why they were detained. READ MORE [ CCTV footage shows US immigration detaining college student Rumeysa Ozturk Opens in new window ] International students seeking to re-enter the US have been detained at the border; like undocumented migrants, these students with the legal right to study in the country fear going home in case they are not allowed to travel back. Now, Trump has revoked Harvard's certification for enrolling international students , leaving nearly 7,000 in limbo. And last week, the State Department paused appointments for international student visas , which affects any non-citizen wishing to study at any US university. These actions will permanently damage American higher education – not simply Harvard or Columbia, which are just the most prominent examples. All American universities are potentially in the firing line. The New York Times reported last week that a Trump administration taskforce had identified 10 universities for particular attention. They include George Washington University; Johns Hopkins University; New York University; Northwestern; the University of California, Berkeley; the University of California, Los Angeles; the University of Minnesota; and the University of Southern California. Many measures may be blocked in the courts; indeed, a judge has already prevented him from blocking Harvard's enrolment of international students. Regardless, the measures have created so much uncertainty that no international student can feel good about studying in the US. Who would want to bet their future education on the chance that American courts will restrain Trump? And even if a Democrat wins the White House in 2028, any student considering a multiyear degree in the US will have to factor in the possibility of a future republican victory. [ Judge blocks Trump administration's ban on international student enrolments at Harvard Opens in new window ] To be sure, universities made themselves vulnerable to attack. By cracking down on pro-Palestinian protests in 2024, many gave Trump an entering wedge. Now 'fighting anti-Semitism' is the flimsy pretext of his current assault. Private universities, in particular, are elitist institutions. The annual cost of a Harvard bachelor's degree is just over $90,000 for next year, though many students – including international students – benefit from need-based financial aid. Because most US universities, including public ones, depend on private gifts to balance their books, they focus on pleasing big donors. They kowtow not just to the rich, but to the ultra-rich. [ Donald Trump's chilling assault on universities mirrors that of the Nazis in 1930s Germany Opens in new window ] Trump retains a lot of political support for anti-elitist attacks on academia among voters without third-level education who have trended republican. The Maga movement loves hierarchies based on wealth, nationality, race, and gender. But it hates the kind of hierarchies that US universities supply: ones based on merit and thereby more open to women and people of colour. Trump's arch nemesis, Barack Obama, demonstrates how a black man could rise to the presidency through academic institutions: Columbia, Harvard Law, and a professorship at the University of Chicago. As imperfect as US universities are, they remain vital institutions of free speech, which is precisely why Trump is attacking them. His attacks have had a chilling effect on college campuses. Some, such as Columbia, have been internally riven over how to respond. Academics and students are demoralised. Many are fighting back, but they are forced to redirect their energy away from studying, teaching, and researching. Three leading scholars of fascism – Marci Shore, Jason Stanley and Timothy Snyder – made headlines by leaving Yale for the University of Toronto. Needless to say, it is a disturbing sign for American democracy when those who know the most about fascism's rise start to flee. Destroying higher education is a strange way of making America great again. US universities have been not just engines of economic growth, they have been tremendous sources of soft power. According to one count, more than 50 current world leaders were educated in the US. Like other aspects of Trump's radical agenda such as his imposition of tariffs, his attack on universities in the name of America First is rapidly accelerating the decline of his country's geopolitical power. But Trump's attack on academia presents Ireland with a unique opportunity . Just think how desirable it is for researchers and students to come here to an English-speaking country that is a functioning democracy. Minister for Education James Lawless recently announced a scheme for attracting disaffected American academics. Yet it is unclear whether it will be of the necessary scale and ambition to truly benefit from the US brain drain. Such a scheme, if successful, would enable Ireland not only to be a refuge for academic freedom and democracy, it would generate long-term economic growth through science and innovation. But the scheme shouldn't be too narrowly focused on the hard sciences. After all, we need artists, humanists, and social scientists – and perhaps some scholars of fascism – to help us understand the madness that is Trump's America. Dr Daniel Geary is Mark Pigott Professor in US History at Trinity College Dublin
Irish Times
an hour ago
- Irish Times
Who really owns the music festival you're heading to this summer?
Anyone who works in the kind of music festivals that don't have billion-dollar entities behind them, will tell you how challenging it is to make things financially sustainable right now. Costs for almost everything a festival needs to run have gone up. Trends in ticket sales are still fluctuating since the pandemic, with big-event experiences sucking up audiences over smaller events. Money needs to be found somewhere, and for years, the experience at many large music festivals is akin to being in a mall where the visual noise of brand 'activations' is as loud as the main stage. We are deep in festival and outdoor concert season. This summer, what that means is asking questions about ownership, sponsorship, and line-ups. A rolling wave of artist and cultural boycotts related to Palestinian solidarity is simultaneously exposing the role of private equity in festivals: who owns what, and who funds what. Some lines of ownership are relatively simple. Coachella, for example, is run by Goldenvoice, which is a branch of AEG Presents, which is the live arm of Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG), which is part of the Anschutz Corporation, which began as an oil well drilling company. The name of Philip Anschutz – the billionaire owner of the entity and son of its founder Fred Anschutz – popped up in the 2017 hearings of the now US Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. According to the New York Times, in 2006 Anschutz successfully lobbied a Colorado senator and the White House in George W Bush's era to nominate Judge Gorsuch to the federal appeals court in Denver. In the 2017 hearings, then-Senator Patrick Leahy noted Anschutz financed uber-conservative groups such as the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation . Rock and roll. READ MORE Other lines of ownership, and where various parent companies invest their money, are more opaque. Currently under fire is Superstruct Entertainment. Superstruct operates in what it calls 'the experiential economy', and owns multiple festivals including the massive Sónar in Barcelona, which it bought in 2024, and the equally large Hungarian festival, Sziget. Last January, Superstruct bought the hugely popular electronic music brand, Boiler Room, from the ticketing platform Dice. It also owns the UK LGBTQ+ festival Mighty Hoopla, and the Dutch electronic music festival DGTL. [ How Live Nation calls the tune for the live music industry Opens in new window ] In June 2024, Superstruct was sold by the private equity firm Providence Equity Partners to another private equity firm, KKR , for €1.3 billion. KKR's portfolio is worth around €620 billion. Its investments include the Israeli data analytics company Optimal+, and the Israeli data centre company Global Technical Realty. In 2019, KKR bought Novaria Group, a manufacturer of aerospace hardware, an acquisition characterised by the Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute as 'betting big on the US defence industry and aerospace engineered parts are part of that theme'. In 2023, KKR bought Circor International, described as 'one of the world's leading providers of mission critical flow control products and services for the Industrial and Aerospace & Defense markets'. Discontent around the KKR-Superstruct relationship has been brewing for some time. Now artists are taking a stand. The London festival, Field Day, bought by Superstruct in 2023, saw 15 artists pull out due to the KKR links. At the time of writing, 28 artists have pulled out of Sónar. Spain's culture minster, Ernest Urtasun, said that KKR is 'not welcome in Spain' , citing policy that companies with alleged economic interests in illegal settlements in Palestine 'cannot operate normally in the European Union'. Superstruct's sale to KKR was beyond the control of various festivals under this umbrella, and they have said as much. But the lack of autonomy festivals have over whose portfolio they ultimately end up in is a recurring theme. Individual consumers experience the same issue. The difference now is that artists and music fans are becoming more aware of financial flows in the context of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and Palestine solidarity more generally, especially at a moment when artists are core to such activism. This is before we even get into the US antitrust lawsuit concerning Live Nation (long-merged with Ticketmaster), heading to trial next March. Last month, Live Nation added a new figure to its board of directors, Richard Grenell , Donald Trump's special presidential envoy for special missions. In Trump's first term, Grenell was ambassador to Germany, a tenure that led Martin Schultz (the former leader of the Social Democratic Party) to characterise his behaviour as 'not like a diplomat, but like a far-right colonial officer'. [ Occupied Territories Bill: what's in it, how it has changed and what the implications might be Opens in new window ] The consciousness of artists and fans is being raised. This moment is about many things. It's about a younger generation and the artists they admire drawing a line. It's about the claustrophobia of capitalism, a system within which escape from ownership and practices whose values you disagree with often feels stiflingly impossible, rendering consumers inadvertently complicit as their spend downstream filters up to god knows what. It's about the billionaire class. It's about shape-shifting conglomerates, private equity, and their Hungry Hippo approach to gobbling up companies and brands digested in heaving portfolios. But it's also about a new generation querying financial flows and their beneficiaries. It's about the BDS movement becoming more and more mainstreamed. And ultimately, it's about something that has always been the case: big money is rarely clean.
Irish Times
an hour ago
- Irish Times
Six injured after ‘terror attack' at Colorado gathering for Israeli hostages
Six people were injured on Sunday in what the FBI described as a 'targeted terror attack' at an outdoor mall in Boulder, Colorado, where a group had gathered to raise attention to Israeli hostages held in Gaza . The suspect, identified as Mohamed Sabry Soliman (45), yelled 'free Palestine' and used a makeshift flame-thrower in the attack, said Mark Michalek, the special agent in charge of the Denver field office. The suspect was taken into custody. The attack occurred at a popular pedestrian mall in Boulder, where a group had gathered for an event to draw attention to Israeli hostages who remain in Gaza. READ MORE The suspect was also injured and was taken to the hospital to be treated, but authorities did not elaborate on the nature of his injuries. Video from the scene showed a witness shouting: 'He's right there. He's throwing Molotov cocktails,' as a police officer with his gun drawn advanced on a bare-chested suspect with containers in each hand. It occurred more than a week after the fatal shooting of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington by a Chicago man who yelled: 'I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza' as he was being led away by police. FBI leaders in Washington said they were treating the Boulder attack as an act of terrorism, and the Justice Department condemned the attack as a 'needless act of violence, which follows recent attacks against Jewish Americans'. Police in Boulder were more circumspect about a motive, however. Police chief Steve Redfearn said it 'would be irresponsible for me to speculate' while witnesses were still being interviewed but noted the group that had gathered in support of the hostages had assembled peacefully and that injuries of the victims – ranging from serious to minor – were consistent with them having been set on fire. Israel's war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on October 7th, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting about 250 others. They are still holding 58 hostages, around a third believed to be alive, after most of the rest were released in ceasefire agreements or other deals. Israel's military campaign has killed more than 54,000 people in Hamas-run Gaza, mostly women and children, according to Gaza's Hamas-controlled health ministry. The offensive has destroyed vast areas, displaced around 90 per cent of the population and left people almost completely reliant on international aid. – AP
