Trump confirms he reduced tariffs to help Tim Cook
While denying he ever changes his mind, Trump has now said he helped out Apple with tariffs because of conversations with Tim Cook.
Trump (right) at the 2019 meeting when he praised "Tim Apple" -- image credit: Apple
It's up there with night follows day, but Trump has now effectively confirmed that it was after speaking with Tim Cook that he changed his tariffs. His statement has to be defined as effectively, because he was typically unclear and attempting to sound as if he were sticking flawlessly to his original tariff plan.
"Look, I'm a very flexible person. I don't change my mind, but I'm flexible," he said to reporters while officially meeting with El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele. "And you have to be."
"You just can't have a wall and you'll only go... sometimes you have to go around it, under it or above it," he continued. "There'll be maybe things coming up... I speak to Tim Cook."
"I helped Tim Cook recently," said Trump. "And that whole business. I don't want to hurt anybody."
Apple gained its massive -- if not complete -- tariff exemption in a surprise announcement on Friday. The world reaction was then that Trump had backed down from his insistence that there would be be no exemptions, so naturally there was then pushback from the White House.
By Sunday, Trump was denying that there had been any exemption and re-framed it as changing from one type of tariff to another. He further had his commerce secretary Howard Lutnick explicitly say that Apple's exemption or exception or whatever the latest synonym is, would only be short term.
It was a clear and firm commitment that wasn't clear. The closest to a commitment Lutnick gave was that the exemption or exception or relief for Apple would be over "in a month or two."
While Lutnick won't commit to a schedule and Trump is adamantly stating that "there was no Tariff 'exception'," the one certainty about the tariff exception is that Tim Cook asked for it. Cook has famously been one of the few business leaders who has been praised by Trump, although he called him "Tim Apple."
Cook was once described by Steve Jobs as not being a "product person," but he's unquestionably a politician. He apparently kept the working relationship going with Trump before the last election, and he is confirmed to have personally donated $1 million to the president's inauguration.
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Comments
That's how this administration works.
He imposed tariffs. There were little to no exceptions. He let that situation sit while markets collapsed everywhere. He doubled down on there being no change of thought and barely hours after saying there would be no backing down, he did just that, suspending 'reciprocal' tariffs for 90 days.
Then, late Friday exemptions were put in place.
By late Sunday we were being told there were no real exemptions (according to Lutnick) but a sort of pause within a pause and everyone was 'on the hook' (according to Trump) and that new tariffs were being devised to replace the original ones but they simply weren't ready and we know no one will even dare explain them (because they are being cooked up as we speak and don't exist).
Even within the administration mixed messaging is emerging and now we are to believe Trump is 'flexible'?
It is nice to hear about walls and going over or below them, or even around them but the US decided to crash straight into them.
There is no intelligence on show here. It's the complete opposite. Chaos and reaction to the problems chaos brings.
Intelligence would never have seen this mess get to this point.
Intelligence would not have seen Trump congratulating his pals for stock market gains hours before he announced another walk back (opening him up to valid insider trading accusations).
Tim Cook and every CEO and small business owner in the US would know what trade policy is and be acting on it. That isn't happening because there is NO stable trade policy.
Everyone is running blind.
Just this morning, little donnie already pivoted.
If you are then that is utterly absurd.
The damage has already been done. None of it was necessary.
It was not intelligent to send someone like JD Vance to the Munich Security Conference to proclaim there was a 'new sheriff in town'. That was plain stupid, disrespectful and embarrassing. It wasn't intelligent to belittle world leaders by saying they were queueing up to kiss his ass. It wasn't intelligent to speak of the Chinese as peasants (in any context). It wasn't intelligent to speak about the 'Governor' of Canada or the '51st state'. It wasn't intelligent to speak about using force to take Greenland. It wasn't intelligent to begin 'peace' talks on Ukraine without Ukraine at the talks. It wasn't intelligent to speak about not letting the people of Gaza back. Or taking control of the Panama Canal.
All of the above should have been approached in an entirely different manner because he has achieved nothing to date and created I'll-will everywhere. Not intelligent when you never know when you might need the collaboration of someone else.
Tariffs are not new. Tariffs are not a problem.
The Trump Tariffs are a problem because they immediately became counterproductive and led to pushback and counter-tariffs from the EU (suspended in good faith) and China (pushing back hard).
Not to mention that two weeks after Liberation Day, nothing has been 'liberated'. Ironic.
Let's also skip over the fact that so much of what he said he would do would happen on Day 1.
So the CEOs of all the top US companies now have literally no idea of what's going to happen next apart from they are all 'on the hook'.
If Trump had done the intelligent thing he would have communicated his plans (those that impacted top US corporations) to make things clear.
Did he do that, in spite of talking to Tim Cook for example? Because if he did do that, Tim Cook wouldn't have airlifted millions of iPhones from India. Right? Or is it Tim heard him out and still thought 'oh, shit!'.
There is no intelligence on show here and the evidence is piling up daily.
The El Salvadoran president likes Trump because Trump is paying him to like him, and offering to pay him a lot more to build gulags for US citizens as well. Like all of Trump's relationships this is entirely transactional.
You're the one engaging in mental acrobatics as you try to spin any of this as good for anyone but Donald Trump.
Politicians (at least when the term is used pejoratively, as it seems to here) don't stand for anything, say whatever they need to say, and shift with the slightest breeze.
That isn't Tim Cook. Exhibit 1: https://www.apple.com/diversity/ ;
Perhaps we can agree that he is politically astute, but that doesn't make him a politician.
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