Tim Cook Declined Middle East Trip With Trump’s Sycophant Entourage

I’ve been giving Tripp Mickle quite a bit of grief over his dumb “Is Trump’s ‘Made in America’ iPhone a Fantasy?” story, but this is an interesting nugget I haven’t seen anyone else highlight:

In the run-up to President Trump’s recent trip to the Middle East, the White House encouraged chief executives and representatives of many U.S. companies to join him. Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, declined, said two people familiar with the decision.

The choice appeared to irritate Mr. Trump. As he hopscotched from Saudi Arabia to the United Arab Emirates, Mr. Trump took a number of shots at Mr. Cook. During his speech in Riyadh, Mr. Trump paused to praise Jensen Huang, the chief executive of Nvidia, for traveling to the Middle East along with the White House delegation. Then he knocked Mr. Cook.

“I mean, Tim Cook isn’t here but you are,” Mr. Trump said to Mr. Huang at an event attended by chief executives like Larry Fink of the asset manager BlackRock, Sam Altman of OpenAI, Jane Fraser of Citigroup and Lisa Su of the semiconductor company AMD.

The presumption here is that Trump’s (possibly illegal) threats of applying a 25% tariff on all imported iPhones, no matter where they’re assembled, are payback for Cook declining to attend this trip in Trump’s entourage of CEOs. When you cave to a bully/extortionist, the bullying/extortion don’t stop. Apple doesn’t really have any significant business interests in countries like Saudi Arabia or Qatar, and it’s not hard to see why an even vaguely ethical business leader would not want to cozy up with Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Maybe Cook was just busy. But maybe Cook, just 100-some days into the Trump 2.0 administration, is already past his “look, he won the election, let’s give him a chance” stage.

★ Tuesday, 27 May 2025