14 DAY TRIAL // President-elect Donald Trump will meet key tech leaders as part of a technology summit taking place on Wednesday at the Trump Tower in Manhattan, and Apple’s and Microsoft’s CEOs are among those invited.
Recode is reporting that Trump invited “less than a dozen” of the tech executives, including Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins, IBM CEO Ginni Rometty, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich, and Oracle CEO Safra Catz.
Entrepreneur Mark Cuban, who criticized Trump on several occasions and backed Hillary Clinton in her presidential campaign, Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman, and Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, were not invited. Dorsey, however, says he’s not sure if he was invited or not, but this would clearly be odd given that Trump is actually quite a big fan of Twitter.
Building products in the US
It goes without saying that tech executives and Donald Trump would discuss recent proposals to move production to the United States, with Apple’s Tim Cook very likely to be particularly interested in this topic.
Donald Trump promised during the presidential campaign that China imports would be more expensive, aiming for a substantial tax increase for companies using parts sourced from China, in an attempt to create more jobs locally and force firms to move operations to the United States.
Apple was one of the companies that were named by Trump in his speeches, as he wanted Cupertino to build iPhones locally using domestic production plants. More recently, Trump promised to offer incentives and other bonuses to companies that move operations to the US.
Cybersecurity and regulations will also be main topics to be discussed at the summit, especially because Trump wants to give more power to law enforcement agencies when it comes to getting access to user data in the US.
“I plan to tell the President-elect that we are with him and will help in any way we can. If he can reform the tax code, reduce regulation and negotiate better trade deals, the U.S. technology industry will be stronger and more competitive than ever,” Oracle CEO Safra Catz was quoted as saying.
It’ll be interesting to watch how this meeting goes, especially given that most tech companies backed Hillary Clinton during the US presidential race.