When Trump meets tech.
It’s commonplace now for people to be curious about everything President-elect Donald Trump does: his meetings, his movements and his meals. Wednesday, that attention shifted to the tech industry, one that that Trump hasn’t been afraid to fight in the past. Here are seven things to know about what happened.
Trump started off with the superlatives.
Trump’s tone at the beginning of the meeting set the stage for a bit of a truce, reports Politico. “There’s nobody like you in the world,” Trump said. “There’s nobody like the people in this room. And anything we can do to help this go along, we’re going to be there for you.” This is despite Trump’s willingness to fight the industry, including criticizing Apple (AAPL) for failing to work with San Bernardino, California, terrorist attack investigators, reports ABC News.
Partisanship didn’t matter.
Despite Trump’s history of criticizing companies, and the fact that several attendees publicly supported Democrat Hillary Clinton, it appeared that hostility was in the past. “We’ll be there for you, and you’ll call my people, you’ll call me — it doesn’t make any difference. We have no formal chain of command around here,” Trump said, according to ABC News.
A who’s who of the industry.
There was plenty of firepower there. Executives included Apple CEO Tim Cook, Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL) CEO Larry Page, Facebook (FB) COO Sheryl Sandberg, Amazon.com (AMZN) CEO Jeff Bezos, International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) CEO Ginni Rometty, Tesla Motors (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk, Cisco Systems (CSCO) CEO Chuck Robbins, Intel Corp. (INTC) CEO Brian Krzanich, Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) CEO Satya Nadella and Oracle Corp. (ORCL) co-chief executive Safra Catz, according to Quartz.
Executives got to speak their mind.
Executives expressed to Trump what the industry needs, including “high-skilled immigration” and handling “regulatory barriers in places like China,” reports Politico. Sources also told Politico that they discussed the federal procurement process and how the government could improve its technology use — concerns important to Peter Thiel, who co-founded data company Palantir. Thiel is also a part of Trump’s transition team.
Bezos called the meeting “productive.”
Trump has been critical of Bezos for a number of issues, including the Washington Post for its campaign reporting. But Bezos tweeted a short, supportive statement for Trump following the election anyway. That optimism seems to have stuck. “I shared the view that the administration should make innovation one of its key pillars, which would create a huge number of jobs across the whole country, in all sectors, not just tech — agriculture, infrastructure, manufacturing — everywhere,” Bezos said in a statement about the meeting.
Twitter (TWTR) wasn’t there.
While Trump uses the platform frequently to express opinions, call out his opponents and make announcements, the company got nudged from “the room where it happens.” A source told Politico it was because the company failed to let the Trump campaign use an emoji with #CrookedHillary, but Sean Spicer, an adviser to Trump, told MSNBC “the conference table was only so big.” A spokesman for the transition team told Reuters it was due to the company’s size. Twitter’s market capitalization is $13.85 billion. Tesla, with a $31.92 billion market capitalization, was the smallest company at the meeting.
This may not be the last meeting.
Politico sources said Trump pledged future meetings with the tech industry. Cook and Musk spoke with Trump separately Wednesday, according to Reuters. As his inauguration approaches and presidency begins, it will become more clear if he keeps to his word in regard to tech.
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7 Things That Happened When Donald Trump Met With Tech Leaders originally appeared on usnews.com
