Tech's Trump Whisperer, Tim Cook, Goes Quiet as His Influence Fades

New York Times

6 days ago

In the run-up to President Trump's recent trip to the Middle East, the White House encouraged chief executives and representatives of many U.S. companies to join him. Tim Cook, Apple's chief executive, declined, said two people familiar with the decision.
The choice appeared to irritate Mr. Trump. As he hopscotched from Saudi Arabia to the United Arab Emirates, Mr. Trump took a number of shots at Mr. Cook.
During his speech in Riyadh, Mr. Trump paused to praise Jensen Huang, the chief executive of Nvidia, for traveling to the Middle East along with the White House delegation. Then he knocked Mr. Cook.
'I mean, Tim Cook isn't here but you are,' Mr. Trump said to Mr. Huang at an event attended by chief executives like Larry Fink of the asset manager BlackRock, Sam Altman of OpenAI, Jane Fraser of Citigroup and Lisa Su of the semiconductor company AMD.
Later in Qatar, Mr. Trump said he 'had a little problem with Tim Cook.' The president praised Apple's investment in the United States, then said he had told Mr. Cook, 'But now I hear you're building all over India. I don't want you building in India.'
On Friday morning, Mr. Trump caught much of his own administration and Apple's leadership off guard with a social media post threatening tariffs of 25 percent on iPhones made anywhere except the United States. The post thrust Apple back into the administration's cross hairs a little over a month after Mr. Cook had lobbied and won an exemption from a 145 percent tariff on iPhones assembled in China and sold in the United States.
The new tariff threat is a reversal of fortune for Mr. Cook. In eight years, he's gone from one of Mr. Trump's most beloved chief executives — whom the president mistakenly and humorously called Tim Apple in 2019 — to one of the White House's biggest corporate targets. The breakdown has been enough to make insiders across Washington and Silicon Valley wonder: Has tech's leading Trump whisperer lost his voice?
Nu Wexler, principal at Four Corners Public Affairs and a former Washington policy communications executive at Google and Facebook, said Mr. Cook's 'very public relationship' with Mr. Trump has backfired.
'It has put Apple at a disadvantage because every move, including a potential concession from Trump, is scrutinized,' Mr. Wexler said. Because Mr. Trump didn't 'have much incentive to either go easy on Apple or cut a deal on tariffs,' he said, 'the incentive to crack down is much stronger.'
Apple did not provide comment. The White House declined to comment on the Middle East trip.
Mr. Trump's new tariffs followed a report by The Financial Times that Apple's supplier Foxconn would spend $1.5 billion on a plant in India for iPhones. The president said the tariffs would begin at the end of June and affect all smartphones made abroad, including Samsung's devices.
Earlier in the week, Mr. Cook had visited Washington for a meeting with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. During an appearance on Fox News on Friday, Mr. Bessent said the administration considered overseas production of semiconductors and electronics components 'one of our greatest vulnerabilities,' which Apple could help address.
'President Trump has been consistently clear about the need to reshore manufacturing that is critical to our national and economic security, including for semiconductors and semiconductor products,' said Kush Desai, a White House spokesman. He added that the administration 'continues to have a productive relationship with Apple.'
The timing of the White House's new tariff plan couldn't be worse for Mr. Cook, who has led Apple for nearly 14 years.
Last month, the company suffered a stinging defeat in an App Store trial. The judge in the trial rebuked Apple executives, saying they had 'outright lied under oath' and that 'Cook chose poorly,' and ruled that Apple had to change how it operates the App Store. Jony Ive, Apple's former chief designer who became estranged from Mr. Cook and left the company in 2019, joined OpenAI last week to build a potential iPhone competitor. Its Vision Pro mixed reality headset, released in January 2024 to fanfare, has been a disappointment. And in March, Apple postponed its promised release of a new Siri, raising fresh doubts about its ability to compete in the industry's race to adopt artificial intelligence.
Still, Apple's market value has increased by more than $2.5 trillion under his leadership, or about $500 million a day since 2011. And Apple remains a moneymaking machine, generating an annual profit of nearly $100 billion.
With Mr. Trump's re-election, Mr. Cook appeared to be in a strong position to help Apple navigate the new administration. In 2019, Mr. Trump said Mr. Cook was a 'great executive because he calls me and others don't.'
Mr. Cook still occasionally pushed back on the president's agenda. During an appearance at a conference for Fortune magazine in late 2017, Mr. Cook explained that the company would love to make things in the United States but that China had more engineers and better skills. He appeared before a live audience on MSNBC a few months later and criticized the president's policy on immigration.
This year, their warm relations have run cold. Mr. Trump is more determined to quickly move manufacturing to the United States, which has made Apple a primary target.
On other administration priorities like dismantling diversity initiatives, Mr. Cook has tried to take a diplomatic position. At its annual general shareholder meeting in February, he said that Apple remained committed to its 'North Star of dignity and respect for everyone' and would continue to 'create a culture of belonging,' but that it might need to make changes to comply with a changing legal landscape.
The bigger problem has been trade. Apple has stopped short of committing to making the iPhone, iPad or Mac laptops in the United States. Instead, the company has moved to assemble more iPhones in India.
Apple has tried to head off Mr. Trump's criticisms of its overseas manufacturing by promising to spend $500 billion in the United States over the next four years. Mr. Cook also has emphasized that the company will source 19 billion chips from the United States this year, and will start making A.I. servers in Houston.
Servers haven't satisfied Mr. Trump. He wants iPhones made in the United States badly enough to create what amounts to an iPhone tariff. It would increase the cost of shipping an iPhone from India or China to the United States by 25 percent. The costs aren't so staggering that they would damage Apple's business, but Mr. Trump could always ratchet up the levies until he gets his wish.
'If they're going to sell it in America, I want it to be built in the United States,' Mr. Trump said on Friday. 'They're able to do that.'
Mr. Cook hasn't responded publicly.