Apple CEO Tim Cook made a personal $1 million "donation" to the Trump inauguration in January 2025:
> Cook, a proud Alabama native, believes the inauguration is a great American tradition, and is donating to the inauguration in the spirit of unity, the sources said.
https://www.axios.com/2025/01/03/tim-cook-apple-donate-1-mil...
He was in a tough spot. I’m sure he doesn’t support the admin, but also he knows Apple needs tariff relief, and paying a “donation” to Trump is a good way to do that.
He basically paid $1M to try and save thousands of jobs at Apple (and of course increase Apple’s value)
It's incredible that paying fealty to the president is talked about so casually, and framed as just a normal and necessary thing to do.
This is something that should be expected in an absolute monarchy, not a democracy.
> Apple needs tariff relief
Tim Cook is going to find out very soon what happens to anyone who makes a deal with Donald Trump: he gets what he wants, and they don't get paid.
> I’m sure he doesn’t support the admin
Why, are you a personal friend of his?
The billionaries are the only people who can actually apply a meaningful level of practical opposition to autocratic rulers. Instead they chose to bend the knee, because they think it better fits their self-interest. Which is what their Russian counterparts did with Putin 20 years ago, and where are they now? Either confined inside a pariah state, or dead.
That poor, poor powerless company.
Apple is the 8-th largest company in the world by revenue [1]. If they wanted to oppose the admin, they would be uniquely positioned to do so. That they choose not to tells me that either they support the admin or that they choose not to. That they chose the option that shows active support for the admin has a negative impact on my ability to empathize with their CEO.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_by...
He literally did support the admin; to claim he doesn’t really is disingenuous. He gave the current admin a million dollars.
If Tim Cook gave you a million dollars, would it be fair to say he doesn’t support you?
It’s silly the kind of gymnastics we engage in to preserve our mental models. The facts are the facts.
Unfortunately, it's not legal for them to take a political stance to the detriment of their shareholders.
That, or these CEOs have no real opinions or principles of their own and simply do what they think will be advantageous for them and their company, and literally no other thought goes into this.
I don't think he "supports" or is "against" this administration, I think it's much simpler: he does not care. I know this is cynical, but if the last three years in the software world has taught us anything, it seems like these tech CEOs regard their employees as expendable, and they're willing to change their political allegiances when they feel like it.
Maybe all of us would do that if put into this position, I don't know, no one wants to give me billions of dollars to run this experiment. Regardless, I'm pretty sure I'm right about this.
Result of the Dodge v Ford Supreme Court decision: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.
It's not directly or criminally illegal. It's civilly illegal in the sense that Apple has a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders in their business decision making. In practice, there are quite broad interpretations of what might be considered "good for your shareholders", but someone's personal interests generally wouldn't qualify as that.
If, hypothetically, Cook said "fuck this administration, we don't like their politics, we're not going to work with them", their shareholders could and probably would sue them. Those shareholders could make a case that Cook was asking of his own political interests, point to other organizations that did make exemption deals, and sue for losses in their share value. The reason for this is not entirely wacky: when you borrow someone's money to do something, you can't do your own pet projects with it.
Now that, of course, doesn't mean that Cook had to donate. But Cook is businessman himself, runs Apple to make money, and doing that is his modus operandi.
> Under some interpretations, the case also affirmed that the business judgment rule that directors may exercise is expansive, leaving Ford and other businesses a wide latitude about how to run the company, if management decisions can point to any rational link to benefiting the corporation as a whole.
It is routine practice for shareholders to sue when their leadership makes questionable decisions. Usually if you search "shareholder lawsuit [stupid thing company leadership did]" you will find results more often than not.
In this case, it's already happening:
https://electrek.co/2025/04/02/nyc-sue-tesla-over-elon-musk-...
It's most certainly not true. It's the ol' "fiduciary duty" canard. Because it's cheaper to make a product by shoving infants into a meat grinder, the company has no choice but to go buy a meat grinder and start stealing babies because they have a "fiduciary duty to shareholders".
Shareholders can sue, yes, but in the U. S. you can sue anyone for anything, and "suing" is not the same as "winning".
Yes, and the Wiki article goes into detail with some more quotes about the difference between the judicial understanding and the common understanding being different. The ruling didn't invent the idea of shareholder value maximization, but it did reinforce that there are legal limits to acting against it. They acknowledged as a practical matter policing it is probably unlikely to expect except in egregious cases for the reason you cited among others.
But fundamentally, shareholder maximization is the goal stated by both common business sense and legal rulings. I personally believe that long-term optimization rather than short term is a more successful strategy. But in the short term the board could remove him for going against the feds. Shareholders could sue if it caused a drop in value or impacted global operations. Caused by I don't know, tariffs that could have been avoided with a corrupt monetary contribution.
I'd love to actually see a CEO refuse to grease the palm and them get sued for not doing something corrupt. Would be a case to follow.
The point is, as I understand it, that CEOs of publicly traded corps are not afforded the freedom required to make an ideological stand and keep their job.
I was careful in how I worded my statement. Clearly, "shoving infants into a meat grinder" is to the detriment of shareholders, because shareholders will lose money if the company does that.
It is also entirely true that you cannot just do whatever you personally want with shareholder money.
The truth here is in the middle.
Apple (well, Cook) certainly did not have to donate to him. But the fact of the matter is that they will have to work with this administration to run their business over the next 4 years, and I am sure that $1m is a small investment to make Cook's life easier.
USA, land of the free, where bribery is legally required now?
> But the fact of the matter is that they will have to work with this administration to run their business over the next 4 years, and I am sure that $1m is a small investment to make Cook's life easier.
This is true. But it has nothing to do with fiduciary duty.
That is neither what I said nor is it what I'm suggesting. I am saying that their practical ability to "oppose the admin" is limited.
I agree completely, and I think it's disgusting and despicable. But honestly this sort of thing has been happening for many, many decades, maybe even centuries, it's just been done a lot more discreetly in the past. The big difference now is that it's so blatant.
While that might sound like an improvement (and kind of is as at least we're getting more honest), I also view it as a big regression. At least when there's perceived shame in being corrupt, people aspire to be better. When it just becomes routine, I fear it's the beginning of the end.