Apple’s Tim Cook Woos Trump With Gaudy Gold Gift At White House

Billionaire Apple CEO Tim Cook gifted Donald Trump a customized glass made in the U.S.A. with a 24-carat gold base on Wednesday.

Cook presented Trump with the gift at a White House press conference to announce further Apple investment in the U.S.

Apple will invest an additional $100 billion on top of a previous $500 billion commitment following pressure from Trump and tariffs on imported goods.

Cook told Trump that his gift was one-of-a-kind and handcrafted by a former Marine Corps corporal now working at Apple, with the glass made in Kentucky and the gold base in Utah.

It was inscribed with Trump’s name, Cook’s signature, and “MADE IN USA.”

“I want to thank Tim Cook. He's a great, great man, a visionary, a businessman, just about every quality you can have other than athleticism,” Trump told reporters.

“I’m looking at him; I’m not 100% sure, but are you a good athlete? I'll bet you’re pretty good. I think he’s good at everything, but I want to thank you very much, Tim. Congratulations.”

Trump had earlier threatened to raise tariffs on Apple products if it did not move iPhone manufacturing to the U.S.

New data centers will now be created across the country by the tech giant, and a smart glass production line used in iPhones and Apple Watches will be built in Kentucky.

Soon, 100% of all cover glass for those products will be made in America, Cook said.

Trump confirmed that because of the new commitment, Apple will not be subjected to a planned 100% tariff on imported chips and semiconductors.

“The good news for companies like Apple is if you’re building in the United States or have committed to build, without question, in the United States, there will be no charge,” he said.

During the announcement, Cook told reporters that Apple’s initial investment of $500 billion was already “yielding results” and new funding would “spur even more production right here in America for critical components used in Apple products all around the world.”

While for now Apple has only committed to making many of its iPhone components in the U.S., Trump still hoped for a fully ‘Made In The U.S.A’ iPhone one day.

“We’ve been talking about it, and the whole thing is set up in other places, and it’s been there for a long time, so in terms of the cost and all,” he told reporters.

“But I think we may incentivize him enough that one day he'll be bringing that.”

Apple has historically made most of its products in China, but when Trump introduced a high tariff on the country earlier this year, it primarily shipped its goods to the U.S. from India and Vietnam.

While the company still faced steep levies, these were lower than tariffs on Chinese imported goods.

According to the BBC, the tech giant forked out $800 million in new border taxes in the three months before June and is expected to pay another $1.1 billion in the coming months.

It is not known if Apple will be subjected to the 50% tariff that has been placed on India in response to the country’s purchasing of Russian oil.

The announcement comes at a time when Apple has signaled it wants to increase its funding for artificial intelligence (AI) and build more data centers.

Apple has been unable to keep up with key competitors Google and Microsoft when it comes to AI products, but Cook told staff during a meeting weeks ago that the company would increase investment.

“Apple must do this. Apple will do this. This is sort of ours to grab,” Cook told employees, people aware of the meeting told Bloomberg. “We will make the investment to do it.”

“We’ve rarely been first,” he added. “There was a PC before the Mac, there was a smartphone before the iPhone, there were many tablets before the iPad, there was an MP3 player before the iPod.”

But he noted that Apple made the “modern” versions of those products and concluded, “This is how I feel about AI.”