Congress members demand Apple exit China in letter to Tim Cook

AppleInsider · May 21, 2021 12:38PM

Four members of Congress sent a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook urging the company reassess its business dealings with China.

Congress members urge Apple to exit China

The spotlight is back on Apple's relationship with China after a report suggested Apple makes many compromises with the Chinese government to violate the citizen's privacy. Apple relies on China not only for its retail business, but for its manufacturing and supply chain as well.

Four members of Congress, Ken Buck, Scott Fitzgerald, Burgess Owens, and Dan Bishop signed a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook asking Apple to end its "near total capitulation to the communist regime in China." The letter describes Apples relationship with the Chinese government as a contradiction to Apple's core values of holding privacy as a fundamental human right.

According to a report from the New York Times Apple not only complies with Chinese demands, they actively participate in the violation of user privacy. From giving data center control to a government controlled facility to removing apps that the government doesn't agree with, Apple is complicit.

Apple says that they follow laws of local governments and only hand over data when properly presented with government requests. Apple denies that it has given unrestricted access to user data and in fact uses even stronger data encryption and data control methods to keep the data safe.

Apple's relationship with the Chinese government is extremely alarming. @RepFitzgerald, @RepBurgessOwens, @RepDanBishop, and I sent a letter to Tim Cook today. See below pic.twitter.com/nW6PGDVL6X
-- Rep. Ken Buck (@RepKenBuck)
May 20, 2021

The letter was shared in a tweet from Representative Ken Buck. It concludes urging apple to "consider Apple's position as a pawn in China's malfeasance and take the necessary actions to separate your company from the Chinese government's abuses of its people, international peace and stability, and democratic principles of freedom and equality."

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80s_Apple_Guy · May 21, 2021 1:00PM

I get Apple is a business, but they just be honest and stop preaching equality for all, privacy etc when they only mean it if it doesn’t interfere with profit.

lkrupp · May 21, 2021 1:10PM

Yep, China is Apple’s Achilles' heel when it comes to their pontifications about human rights, privacy, security, diversity, inclusion. It all rings as hollow when they kowtow to a repressive, totalitarian, genocidal regime. Never mind LGBTQ+ issues there. And yet some here are giddy about the prospect of China overtaking the U.S. as the world’s largest economy. What pressure will that put on republican democracies?

So what does Apple do? Follow the advice of politicians and lose one of their biggest markets, shrink dramatically in size and become the next target on Wall Street for extinction stories?

Or do they keep the status quo and suffer the slings and arrows of their hypocrisy?

foregoneconclusion · May 21, 2021 1:11PM

All four are Republicans. All four voted against an investigation of the January 6th insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. That gives you an idea of how deep their support of "democratic principles" actually goes.

hammeroftruth · May 21, 2021 1:15PM

This unfortunately is how you do business in China. That is where pretty much everyone’s supply chain comes from.

This is why there is a shortage of chips due to the pandemic. Production stopped in China.

If you really want change, the United States has to figure out if they want to go thru the pain of bringing back manufacturing here. Things will get more expensive like they are with inflation, much more expensive, but the other side of the coin is we aren’t capitulating to China at least when it comes to manufacturing.

Next we would look at buying back the $1.09 trillion in debt they hold in treasury bonds.

This is pie in the sky thinking, but by removing the luxuries the people of China get by being the worlds source of manufacturing will force their government into making changes.

It might be too late for that though.

retrogusto · May 21, 2021 1:26PM

foregoneconclusion said:

All four are Republicans. All four voted against an investigation of the January 6th insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. That gives you an idea of how deep their support of "democratic principles" actually goes.

They’re clearly not big on capitalism, either. They might get better results with authoritarian communism, but it would be tricky to market it to their base unless they can get the TV personalities on the same page.

foregoneconclusion · May 21, 2021 1:28PM

hammeroftruth said: Next we would look at buying back the $1.09 trillion in debt they hold in treasury bonds.

No benefit to that. China and Japan (which is actually the largest foreign debt holder now) have no real incentive to dump their debt holdings due to their reliance on exporting goods. And the vast majority of debt is held by the U.S. public, not foreign countries.

rotateleftbyte · May 21, 2021 1:31PM

Apple isn't the only very large US company to do business with China. Virtually all major US companies have some form of trading relationship with the PRC. If Apple agrees to their demands then who is next? Boeing? GM? Disney? JPMC? Who? If those politicians are suggesting that each and every US company stop trading with China then they really have no clue about global trade. The Chinese will certainly retaliate and call in the huge amounts of US Debt that they hold. What then GOP? That act alone would guarantee that the USA defaults on its debt repayments. That would plunge the world into a very deep depression. These people really do need to be taught about the laws of unintended consequences and how they apply to the US State as a whole. That said, the human rights crimes that the PRC are doing to its citizens is abhorrent. Much worse went on during the cultural revolution but it is still wrong. I'd like the GOP to clean up its own human rights scandal first. Denying US citizens the right to vote is a crime against the constitution but they don't see it like that.

JustMee · May 21, 2021 1:43PM

hammeroftruth said:

This unfortunately is how you do business in China. That is where pretty much everyone’s supply chain comes from.
This is why there is a shortage of chips due to the pandemic. Production stopped in China. ...

I think you are mistaking chips produced in Taiwan for being produced in China.

mike1 · May 21, 2021 1:45PM

hammeroftruth said:

This unfortunately is how you do business in China. That is where pretty much everyone’s supply chain comes from.
This is why there is a shortage of chips due to the pandemic. Production stopped in China.

If you really want change, the United States has to figure out if they want to go thru the pain of bringing back manufacturing here. Things will get more expensive like they are with inflation, much more expensive, but the other side of the coin is we aren’t capitulating to China at least when it comes to manufacturing.
Next we would look at buying back the $1.09 trillion in debt they hold in treasury bonds.

This is pie in the sky thinking, but by removing the luxuries the people of China get by being the worlds source of manufacturing will force their government into making changes.
It might be too late for that though.

It's not just about manufacturing and jobs. This particular letter criticizes Apple's willingness to following Chinese laws, however much the western democracies don't like them. It's just posturing. Do these idiots know that if all American companies decided to stop doing business with China, millions more American jobs and companies would be in jeopardy. Should Coca Cola stop selling in China? What about Boeing or John Deere and Caterpillar? Does Yum brads close all their restaurants or Disney not distribute films because they have to be edited slightly differently. Of course not.

zimmie · May 21, 2021 1:46PM

I know this isn't the main focus of the article, but how exactly is China communist? When Xi Jinping took over, he abandoned any pretense of Marxism at the government level. Mao famously executed landlords and seized the land, but since 2007, they're back to having personal ownership of land ("private" seems like a bad word to use with the level of surveillance they have). They have long had personal ownership of other property and money. They are openly capitalist at nearly all levels of society, yet we still call them "communist China".

The ruling party is called the Chinese Communist Party, but they seem no more communist than the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is democratic or a republic, or the USA PATRIOT Act is patriotic. Fascist and totalitarian seem like good descriptors, but communist really doesn't.

In principle, I agree that Apple should do less business with totalitarian governments. They're a publicly-traded company, though, and are therefore obligated to do as much business as they can. If Apple were to stop selling things in China, that would reduce their revenue by tens of billions of dollars per year. The stock price would tank, and a lot of their shareholders would sue them. How do these representatives propose to address that inevitable outcome?

goodbyeranch · May 21, 2021 1:59PM

foregoneconclusion said:

All four are Republicans. All four voted against an investigation of the January 6th insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. That gives you an idea of how deep their support of "democratic principles" actually goes.

My first thought confirmed. Thanks.

Beats · May 21, 2021 2:04PM

Will the U.S. government cover the financial loss? Ban all knockoff iPhones/iPads (at least from China) and give Apple rights to what they own?

Of course not.

avon b7 · May 21, 2021 2:06PM

foregoneconclusion said:

All four are Republicans. All four voted against an investigation of the January 6th insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. That gives you an idea of how deep their support of "democratic principles" actually goes.

Yeah. In lockdown I listened to a bunch of Snowden interviews and was even more shocked than I thought I'd be. Not sure how these four can talk about 'privacy' in China with a straight face when, right there beside them, they have a list of US breaches as long as your arm.

The same applies to Pence & co talking about, ehem, 'clean' networks.

thinkman100000000 · May 21, 2021 2:10PM

Considering it was the US Government that paved the way for almost EVERYTHING manufactured here to go to China, these hypocrites need to provide a solution to bringing these manufacturing jobs back or they need to shut up!

ackpfft · May 21, 2021 2:11PM

Perhaps our victory is AAPL pulling 10s of billions of dollars (in profit) out of the China to support ‘MERICA.

sdw2001 · May 21, 2021 2:20PM

foregoneconclusion said:

All four are Republicans. All four voted against an investigation of the January 6th insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. That gives you an idea of how deep their support of "democratic principles" actually goes.

That’s because the investigation into January 6 is nothing but a sham. It’s just another election issue for the Democrats. Believe me, they don’t want what really happened coming out. It wasn’t an insurrection. It wasn’t an attempt to overthrow the government. It was a few hundred idiots who got out of control, some bad actors and even some on the other side of the political spectrum who infiltrated the group. There were no weapons found. It was planned mostly on Twitter and Facebook. None of the fatalities had anything to do with violence. This is just an excuse to continue locking down the capitol and silence conservatives. We can expect more of this as we approach the midterms. The Democrats know it is likely to be an electoral bloodbath for them.

get serious · May 21, 2021 2:38PM

sdw2001 said:

foregoneconclusion said:

All four are Republicans. All four voted against an investigation of the January 6th insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. That gives you an idea of how deep their support of "democratic principles" actually goes.

That’s because the investigation into January 6 is nothing but a sham. It’s just another election issue for the Democrats. Believe me, they don’t want what really happened coming out. It wasn’t an insurrection. It wasn’t an attempt to overthrow the government. It was a few hundred idiots who got out of control, some bad actors and even some on the other side of the political spectrum who infiltrated the group. There were no weapons found. It was planned mostly on Twitter and Facebook. None of the fatalities had anything to do with violence. This is just an excuse to continue locking down the capitol and silence conservatives. We can expect more of this as we approach the midterms. The Democrats know it is likely to be an electoral bloodbath for them.

"No weapons found" You keep using that word, I don't think you know what it means.

muthuk_vanalingam · May 21, 2021 2:41PM

lkrupp said:

Yep, China is Apple’s Achilles' heel when it comes to their pontifications about human rights, privacy, security, diversity, inclusion. It all rings as hollow when they kowtow to a repressive, totalitarian, genocidal regime. Never mind LGBTQ+ issues there. And yet some here are giddy about the prospect of China overtaking the U.S. as the world’s largest economy. What pressure will that put on republican democracies?

So what does Apple do? Follow the advice of politicians and lose one of their biggest markets, shrink dramatically in size and become the next target on Wall Street for extinction stories?

Or do they keep the status quo and suffer the slings and arrows of their hypocrisy?

Guess what - Apple has a 3rd option apart from the 2 options that you listed. I.e. shut up their mouth about "human rights, privacy, security, diversity, inclusion etc" all over the world. Then there won't be any hypocrisy for others to talk about. Apple has brought this on themselves by their own actions. No other company "preaches" like Apple does. They do NOT get called out because they don't preach as much as Apple does. Apple does not need to do anything else - just shutting their mouth about the "moral high ground" will do.

slurpy · May 21, 2021 3:09PM

And how the fuck would depriving 1.4 Billion Chinese consumers of Apple products and services help human rights in ANY way? It's like Apple shooting itself right in the face, with zero benefit. Or do these asshole politicians think that suddenly China will change their policies about everything if Apple pulls out, or threatens to? Makes zero sense. Why should Apple cede the largest market in the world, while none of their competitors do so? Because of some childish notion of "hypocrisy" some people accuse them of?

NYC362 · May 21, 2021 3:16PM

Meanwhile, all four of these Congressmen use iPhones to send their tweets.

A bit hypocritical...but then again, that is the mainline of GOP DNA.

Congress members demand Apple exit China in letter to Tim Cook

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