Apple CEO Tim Cook says he told Trump tariffs are wrong approach to China

Cook said his message to Trump focused on the importance of trade and how cooperation can boost the economy more than nations acting alone.

Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook said he criticised Donald Trump’s approach to trade with China in a recent White House meeting, while urging the president to address the legal status of immigrants known as Dreamers.

In an interview on Bloomberg Television, Cook said his message to Trump focused on the importance of trade and how cooperation between two countries can boost the economy more than nations acting alone.

Cook met with Trump in the Oval Office in late April amid a brewing trade war between the US and China. The Trump administration instituted 25 per cent tariffs on at least US$50 billion worth of products from China, sparking retaliation. In the interview on “The David Rubenstein Show: Peer-to-Peer Conversations,” Cook acknowledged that previous trade policies were flawed but said Trump’s move is also problematic.

“It’s true, undoubtedly true, that not everyone has been advantaged from that – in either country – and we’ve got to work on that,” Cook said. “But I felt that tariffs were not the right approach there, and I showed him some more analytical kinds of things to demonstrate why.”

Although Apple produces most of its products in China and lists the US and China among its three largest markets, the Cupertino, California-based technology company hasn’t been seriously affected by trade tensions so far. While products like the iPhone and iPad are designed in the US, they are made using China-based factories run by the likes of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. and Pegatron Corp.

Apple generated $35 billion in revenue from the Americas in the most recent holiday quarter, while sales in China reached almost $18 billion. China has become one of Apple’s most important markets since Cook became CEO in 2011, and the company now has 41 retail stores in the region, the most outside the US

Closer to home, Cook said he asked the president to find a resolution for undocumented immigrants who were brought to the US as children. Lawmakers have so far failed to negotiate a legislative replacement for the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals programme that spared Dreamers from deportation. “We’re only one ruling away from a catastrophic case there,” Cook said.

Apple has been more supportive of a Trump-backed law that slashed corporate taxes. It’s especially beneficial for Apple and other large US technology companies that have hundreds of billions of dollars held overseas and are now bringing that money back. Cook said Apple will inject $350 billion into the US over the next five years, through tax payments, hiring, a new campus and $30 billion in capital expenditure.

“We’re also going to buy some of our stock because we view our stock as a good value,” Cook told Rubenstein in the interview. “It’s good for the economy as well because if people sell stock they pay taxes on their gains.”

Cook also touched on Apple’s fast-growing services business, saying the Apple Music streaming service now has more than 50 million users on either paid subscriptions or free trials. Last month, the company passed 40 million subscribers, with 8 million trying the service out through free trials. Apple still lags Spotify Technology SA, which said this month that it has 75 million paying customers.

Rubenstein co-founded Carlyle Group LP, a private-equity firm that invested in the Beats consumer-electronics and streaming businesses. Apple acquired the venture in 2014 and turned the streaming operation into Apple Music, while keeping the Beats device brand.

Cook indicated that Apple will make a stronger push into streaming video and original TV shows and movies but declined to provide specifics. “We are very interested in the content business. We will be playing in a way that is consistent with our brand,” Cook said. “We’re not ready to give any details on it yet. But it’s clearly an area of interest.”

http:// www.scmp.com/tech/article/2146234/apple-ceo-says-he-told-trump-tariffs-are-wrong-approach-china

>>1424562

Loud and clear on that one, kek

US business groups bash Trump tariffs as China talks intensify

US companies and business groups are lining up to oppose the Trump administration’s plan to slap tariffs on Chinese imports, as the two nations step up efforts to resolve their trade dispute.

About 120 firms and industry groups are expected to testify at a hearing beginning Tuesday on the administration’s plan to impose tariffs on US$50 billion in Chinese goods. So many groups signed up that the US Trade Representative’s Office extended the hearing by two days until Thursday. The USTR has received more than 2,700 comments.

The hearing will coincide with a planned trip by Chinese President Xi Jinping’s top economic adviser to Washington for broader trade negotiations, in a follow-up to talks led by US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in Beijing earlier this month.

Companies including US Steel Corp, Best Buy and General Electric, as well as lobby groups such as the National Retail Federation, Consumer Technology Association and National Association of Manufacturers, are set to testify this week. While they are generally supportive of US action to level the playing field on trade and investment with China, many want the talks to focus on resolving differences rather than the pursuit of tariffs.

Some companies, such as AK Steel Corp, are in favour of President Donald Trump’s plans to slap duties on Chinese goods to punish the nation for abuse of US intellectual property. US manufacturers, consumer products companies and technology groups that filed written submissions opposing the tariffs say they would raise input costs and consumer prices and draw crippling retaliatory duties from China.

The industry backlash against the planned tariffs comes amid signs the president may be seeking a less confrontational approach to Beijing. In a surprise twist, Trump said Sunday he was helping to allow Chinese telecom-equipment maker ZTE Corp “get back into business” after the US cut off the company’s access to US suppliers for allegedly making false statements in a sanctions case.

On Monday, Trump defended his move to help ZTE after the concession stoked bipartisan criticism. “ZTE, the large Chinese phone company, buys a big percentage of individual parts from US companies,” Trump said in a tweet. “This is also reflective of the larger trade deal we are negotiating with China and my personal relationship with President Xi.”

Trump proposed the tariffs after USTR concluded China violates US intellectual property in a variety of ways, including by forcing American companies to transfer technology. Last month, the administration released a list of US$50 billion of proposed products to be hit with tariffs, from semiconductor components to sewing-machine needles.

After China promised to retaliate with tariffs in kind on soybeans and other US exports, Trump suggested the amount should be raised by US$100 billion. The US has not released a list to meet that expanded goal, and the administration has not specified when any of the duties will take effect, opening the door to companies to try to shape Trump’s plans. A comment period on the first US$50 billion in proposed duties ends May 22.

http:// www.scmp.com/tech/china-tech/article/2146237/us-business-groups-bash-trump-tariffs-china-talks-intensify

>>1424677

It would be helpful for you to be more clear on what you didn't about this article, What seems to be the problem here?

>>1424804

Okay anon, got it thanks for the explanation:)

North Korea suspends talks with South over US military drills, casts doubt on Trump-Kim summit in Singapore

SEOUL (AFP) - North Korea on Wednesday (May 16) called into question a much-anticipated and unprecedented summit between its leader Kim Jong Un and US President Donald Trump.

Pyongyang also cancelled high-level talks due Wednesday with Seoul over the Max Thunder joint military exercises being held between the US and the South, Seoul said.

"There is a limit to the amount of good will and chances we can give," the North's official news agency KCNA said.

The drills between the two allies' air forces were a rehearsal for invasion and a provocation at a time when inter-Korean relations were warming, it added.

The US will "have to undertake careful deliberations about the fate of the planned North Korea-US summit in light of this provocative military ruckus", it said.

Washington said it will continue to plan the meeting in Singapore on June 12, with State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert telling reporters it had received "no notification" of a position change by North Korea.

The language used by KCNA is a sudden and dramatic return to the rhetoric of the past from Pyongyang, which has long argued that it needs nuclear weapons to defend itself against the US.

Hostilities in the 1950-53 Korean War stopped with a ceasefire, leaving the two halves of the peninsula divided by the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) and still technically at war.

At a dramatic summit last month in Panmunjom, the truce village in the DMZ, Kim and the South's President Moon Jae In pledged to pursue a peace treaty to formally end the conflict, and reaffirmed their commitment to denuclearising the Korean peninsula.

But the phrase is open to interpretation on both sides and the North has spent decades developing its atomic arsenal, culminating last year in its sixth nuclear test - by far its biggest to date - and the launch of missiles capable of reaching the US.

The drive has seen it subjected to multiple rounds of UN Security Council resolutions, while Trump threatened it with "fire and fury" as he and Kim traded personal insults and threats of war last year.

Then relations underwent a sudden and dramatic turnaround as Moon seized the opportunity presented by February's Winter Olympics in the South to broker talks between Washington and Seoul.

In a dizzying array of diplomatic steps, the biggest so far was his meeting with Kim in the DMZ last month.

The Trump-Kim summit is due in Singapore on June 12, with Washington demanding the North give up its weapons in a complete, verifiable and irreversible way.

High-level talks were meant to take place in the DMZ Wednesday to discuss follow-up measures to the Panmunjom summit.

Thunderstruck

South Korea and the US are security allies, each pledged to come to the aid of the other if attacked, and Washington has nearly 30,000 troops stationed in the South to defend it against its neighbour, which invaded in 1950.

The two-week Max Thunder exercise started last Friday and involves some 100 aircraft from the two allies, including F-22 stealth fighter jets, B-52 bombers and other fighters.

"We have not heard anything from (the North Korean) government… to indicate we would not continue conducting these exercises or would not continue planning for our meeting between President Trump and Kim Jong Un next month," State Department spokeswoman Nauert said Tuesday.

Washington has often deployed its military hardware in shows of strength to put pressure on Pyongyang - last year it sent three of its aircraft carriers to the waters off the peninsula simultaneously.

The North has consistently condemned military drills as preparations for invasion, and in the past has often responded with actions and provocations of its own in a cycle of events.

The major Key Resolve and Foal Eagle exercises, usually around March, have often sent tensions on the peninsula soaring.

But in this year's diplomatic rapprochement, the allies delayed those drills until after the Olympics and Paralympics in Pyeongchang as Moon sought to secure the North's participation at the Games.

In turn, envoys from Seoul said Kim told them he would "understand" if the exercises went ahead.

In the event the drills did take place and there was none of the usual rhetoric from the North.

Pyongyang has dramatically toned down its condemnations of its enemies in recent months.

But it has a long history of switching from aggression to engagement, or vice versa.

The day after the Panmunjom summit, KCNA condemned a US exercise to train for the evacuation of its nationals from the South, calling it "an act aimed to make war a fait accompli and incite atmosphere for it".

https:// www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/north-korea-suspends-talks-with-south-over-us-military-drills-casts-doubt-on-trump

>>1424932

I believe you might be right. Looking into it.

Pentagon plays down US-South Korea drills after North suspends talks

WASHINGTON (REUTERS) - The Pentagon on Tuesday (May 15) played down ongoing military exercises with South Korea, saying they were routine and defensive in nature after North Korea blamed them for its decision to suspend high-level talks with Seoul scheduled for Wednesday.

"Republic of Korea (ROK) and US military forces are currently engaged in the recurring, annual ROK-US spring exercises, to include exercises Foal Eagle 2018 and Max Thunder 2018," a Pentagon spokesman said, adding that the Max Thunder air combat drills were scheduled to run from May 14-25.

"These defensive exercises are part of the ROK-US Alliance's routine, annual training program to maintain a foundation of military readiness."

North Korea threw into question an unprecedented summit between its leader Kim Jong Un and US President Donald Trump scheduled for next month, denouncing military exercises between South

Korea and the United States as a provocation and calling off high-level talks with Seoul.

A report on North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency angrily attacked the “Max Thunder” air combat drills, which it said involved US stealth fighters and B-52 bombers, and appeared to mark a break in months of warming ties between North and South Korea and between Pyongyang and Washington.

Any cancellation of the June 12 summit in Singapore, the first meeting between a serving US president and a North Korean leader, would deal a major blow to Trump’s efforts to score the biggest diplomatic achievement of his presidency.

US State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said Washington had no information from North Korea about the threat to cancel the summit and continued to plan for that meeting.

“Kim Jong Un had said previously that he understands the need and the utility of the United States and the Republic of Korea continuing in its joint exercises,” she told a briefing.

“We have not heard anything from that government or the government of South Korea to indicate that we would not continue conducting these exercises or that we would not continue planning for our meeting between President Trump and Kim Jong Un next month,” she said.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said the United States would examine the North Korean statement “and continue to coordinate closely with our allies.”

South Korea’s National Security Office head Chung Eui Yyong said in early March, after meeting Kim, that the North Korean leader understood that “routine” joint military exercises between South Korea and the United States would continue in spite of a warming of ties.

This was widely considered to be a major North Korea concession, though Pyongyang never publicly withdrew its long-standing demand for an end to the drills.

https://www. straitstimes.com/world/united-states/pentagon-plays-down-us-skorean-drills-after-north-suspends-talks

>>1424955

>>1424979

>>1424982

I don't disagree on any of these points, could be clowns, or it could be Iran fueling, either way its clowns. Checking Iran news for any markers on this subject.

>>1425028

I think the key is clowns in Iran…and I believe with that in mind you are correct. We did just cut them off at the knees with the loss of the deal.