Tech leaders, Trump work to warm frosty relations
President’s comments underscore what has been a relationship tinged with tension
As he surveyed a room of 18 tech executives whose companies are worth trillions of dollars, Donald Trump couldn’t resist.
“We have approximately $3.5 trillion of market value in this room. But that is almost the exact number we have created (through stock market gains) since my election,” he told Apple CEO Tim Cook, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and others who gathered Monday at the White House to discuss how the federal government can make better use of technology. “In fact, I think we have you beat by a little bit, which is a pretty good number. But I congratulate you all on an amazing job.”
And with that classic opener from Trump — correct in the stock gains, if not precisely all the reasons — began what may be a thaw in recently frosty relations between the tech industry and the White House.
Tech stocks have indeed been on a tear, leading the stock market to record highs and ballooning the personal wealth of attendees such as Bezos, now the second-wealthiest man in the world. Amazon shares passed $1,000 in May, Google parent Alphabet accomplished the same feat this month, and Apple passed $800 billion in market value, a record, in May.
The Wilshire 5000, the broad gauge of the stock market, has added $3.6 trillion since election day on Nov. 8, 2016, a byproduct of several factors, economists and professional investors say, including early hopes of a fiscal stimulus from Trump’s election, a rebounding global economy and strong first-quarter earnings.
Against this sunny backdrop, the new administration’s policies have cast a pall on the tech industry. The president and Silicon Valley differ sharply on immigration, offshoring of jobs, encryption and H-1B work visas. But the two sides could find common ground on taxation, deregulation, and apprenticeship programs and job training.
Early Tuesday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn met with 10 tech industry group leaders at the White House. Mnunchin said the administration’s objective with tax reform is lower corporate tax rates and a simplified individual tax system.
The goal is to make it easier for U.S.-based companies to bring revenues generated overseas back to the U.S. with less of a penalty than they face currently, Mnuchin said.
“We are committed to getting this done and getting it done quickly,” he said. “Our objective is to simplify the system … and bring back trillions of dollars.”
That will increase investment and “create jobs in our country,” Mnuchin said. The administration wants to have a tax plan that’s agreed upon by the White House and Congress by the first weeks of September. Yet details remain sketchy, and some Repub- lican congressmen from high-tax states such as California, New York and Illinois have voiced opposition.
Monday’s meeting of tech’s biggest names — 18 executives, including the leaders of IBM, Oracle, SAP and Intel, attended — kicked off tech week in Washington, D.C. During the session’s sitdown, among other things, Bezos says it was “impossible to overstate” the importance of artificial intelligence, and Trump vowed “stronger protection against cyber attacks.” Separately, Cook brought up the importance of immigration, though it remained unclear what was specifically discussed.
White House spokesman Sean Spicer, in his Tuesday briefing, said the president will visit Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Wednesday to observe “innovations in agriculture” at Kirkwood Community College.
Thursday, Trump will be treated to demos of drones and universal broadband, according to Spicer.
The administration’s emphasis on tech, and its growing influence on the U.S. economy, is “largely symbolic, but symbols are important in politics,” says Sarah Bonk, a former Apple senior design manager who is co-founder and chief strategy officer at DisruptDC, a non-partisan, nonprofit coalition for better government and elections based in Washington, D.C.
“There are opportunities, as there were during the Obama administration, to create a more sane tax policy and address the jobs and skills gaps,” she says.
“Our objective is to simplify the system … and bring back trillions of dollars.” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on coming tax reform