Tim Cook Told Donald Trump China Tariffs Are 'Not the Right Approach' in Recent Meeting

Apple CEO Tim Cook conducted a private meeting with United States President Donald Trump on Wednesday, April 25, where the discussion was said to be focused "on trade." Following a recent interview with Bloomberg Television, Cook divulged more details about the meeting, mentioning that the two men discussed topics like recently imposed tariffs on China and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

In late March, Trump launched 25 percent tariffs on around $50 billion worth of Chinese products, citing a "tremendous intellectual property theft problem" in previous U.S./China trade relations. In the new interview, which happened on "The David Rubenstein Show: Peer-to-Peer Conversations," Cook admitted previous trade policies had their drawbacks, but still held that Trump's tariffs are "not the right approach" in this situation.

Apple CEO Tim Cook at the Executive Tech Summit at Trump Tower in December 2016

“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.”

The two also discussed the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which protects young immigrants who were brought into the U.S. as children from deportation. The Trump administration's decision to end DACA was blocked in January by a federal judge in San Francisco, and today representatives of the administration will attempt to convince the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that it was justified in the move to end the program.

In the days after Trump signed an executive order against DACA early last year, Apple and other major tech companies penned an open letter to Trump urging the importance of the program. Cook discussed his support of DACA throughout the year, and told Rubenstein in this week's interview, "We're only one ruling away from a catastrophic case there."

Other parts of the interview touch upon the new corporate tax policy in the U.S., Apple's growing services segment, Apple Music's new 50 million paid and free trial user milestone, and the company's behind-the-scenes work on original TV content. Head over to Bloomberg to read more details from the interview.

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