US labour watchdog halts Apple cases after group’s lawyer picked for top job

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)

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...

Unfortunately, it's not legal for them to take a political stance to the detriment of their shareholders.

Wait, is that true? What law is that?

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.