President-elect Donald Trump stated that he talked with Bill Gates and Apple CEO Tim Cook, specifically discussing with the latter that he intends for Apple to build plants in the U.S. instead of China and Vietnam.
Trump assured that Apple will be presented with incentives, primarily through tax cuts, so they feel inclined to build their renown smartphone in U.S. soil.
Although Cook has not emitted an official statement concerning Trump’s comments, it is clear that the future president will be working towards eliminating regulations and boost the U.S.’s job availability, which he considers will put the nation back on track to being a global economic leader.
American-made iPhones
Cook has already stated that one of Apple’s primary interests is to pay fewer taxes to account for it $74 billion overseas revenue, seeing that it is one of the highest tax-paying companies residing in the U.S.
Following the scheme of “the rich should pay more,” because Apple’s revenues are so high, it must pay more contributions to the federal government. The company dodges this by diverting its revenue thanks to foreign subsidiaries. Apple’s CEO was quoted calling the current tax scheme adequate for the “industrial age, not the digital age,” adding that “it’s awful for America.”
Trump acknowledged that forcing Apple to bring its manufacturing process to the U.S. can cause potential losses and may lead the company to use robots instead of human workers, but he emphasized that those robots would have to be built, which allows for the creation of even more jobs.
“Right now we don’t make the robots. We don’t make anything. But we’re going to, I mean, look, robotics is becoming very big and we’re going to do that. We’re going to have more factories. We can’t lose 70,000 factories. Just can’t do it. We’re going to start making things,” stated Trump when questioned about jobs being replaced by robots.
In the interview with the New York Times, Trump also discussed how he felt being the president-elect, which he responded “comfortable,” even if the presidential duties have awed him as it would occur to anyone else. He also talked about meeting President Obama, admitting that the reunion was supposed to last 15 minutes and it prolonged to over one hour-and-a-half.
“He said very nice things after the meeting and I said very nice things about him. I really enjoyed my meeting with him. We have — you know, we come from different sides of the equation,” stated the president-elect.
Trump revealed that Obama told him about what he believes are the biggest problems for the country, which he refused to discuss amid the interview. Donald Trump also reflected that he believes the U.S. should not be a nation builder and that armed conflict without any direct compensation should not be of interest.
When addressing Syria, Trump asked to speak off the record by starting with an “I don’t want to violate a …”
Source: New York Times