Why Apple needs Tim Cook more than ever in the age of Trump

In December 2023, I wrote an article exploring Apple CEO Tim Cook’s most likely successors, because there will come a day when he steps aside as chief executive at the iPhone maker. I wrote the piece in response to rare comments Cook had made—to Dua Lipa, no less—revealing that Apple has “very detailed succession plans” in preparation for his departure.

Cook tried to alleviate investor fears of a near-term departure by saying that he still planned to be at Apple “for a while.” But as I noted at the time, that’s a subjective phrase—and one Cook used nearly 18 months ago now. A lot has changed since then. Hell, a lot has changed in the tech world over the past three weeks alone, ever since Trump unleashed his disastrous “Liberation Day” tariffs, sending tech supply chains—and tech stock prices—into chaos. 

Those tariffs have gotten me thinking a lot again about Cook, and those succession plans he announced a year and a half before President Trump lobbed an economic grenade at the world. All this has got me believing that Cook should pause any retirement plans he’s had in the works and stay on as Apple’s CEO until at least the end of Trump’s second term, in January 2029. Because the way things are going with the Trump-induced economic turmoil, Apple is going to need Cook more than ever these next four years. And Cook is uniquely suited for the challenge in two key ways.

The “ops guy” cometh

When historic tariffs require a company to completely rethink its supply chain, you want an operations guy in charge, someone deeply familiar with the company’s logistics and supply chain. That’s precisely what Cook is, and his operations mastery is one of the main reasons Apple made it through its previous most economically challenging time—the late 1990s.

While Steve Jobs gets all the credit for Apple’s late-’90s rebirth, the fact is that Jobs probably wouldn’t have been able to save the company without Cook’s help. Jobs had come back to Apple in 1997 and quickly reimagined its product lineup, but that much-needed creativity injection wasn’t going to fix Apple’s other major problem at the time: its cumbersome supply chain, which had put massive financial and logistical challenges on Apple for years. 

In 1998, Jobs hired Cook as Apple’s senior vice president for worldwide operations, and Cook immediately went to work overhauling Apple’s operations—from manufacturing to shipping to asset allocation. This clean sweep of Apple’s operations that Cook led enabled the company to ramp up and distribute the product innovations en masse that Jobs would soon start pumping out, including the iMac, the iPod, and the iPhone.

Cook’s ruthless optimization of Apple’s supply chain, ironically, was often used against him by those unhappy with Apple’s announcement in 2011 that he would succeed Jobs as CEO. Cook was an “ops guy,” his detractors argued, when Apple needed another “product visionary” like Jobs.

I won’t rehash much of what I’ve already argued before, but while Steve Jobs was a creative genius and beloved tech leader, the simple fact is that the “ops guy” has grown Apple into a larger technology juggernaut, by orders of magnitude, than Jobs ever could have. When Jobs passed away in October 2011, Apple’s market cap was just north of $300 billion. Last year, after just over 13 years of Cook’s leadership, Apple’s market cap reached more than $3.7 trillion.

Now, of course, Apple has lost nearly a fifth of that value since, largely thanks to Trump’s chaotic tariff war decimating tech stocks. But that’s exactly one of the reasons Apple needs Cook more than ever. Tariff barriers—especially of this historic scale—often require a reorganization of global supply chains. Who better to be at the helm of one of the company’s most affected by those barriers than a CEO who is arguably one of the best “ops guys” in business history?

But it’s not just Cook’s deep understanding of global operations that is the reason Apple needs him. It’s also because Cook has shown time and again that he is one of the most skilled business leaders when it comes to engaging with President Trump.

In the arena with Donald Trump

In late 2024, Tim Cook received a lot of criticism from the left for being one of the many tech CEOs to meet with then-President-elect Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Cook received even more criticism in January when he personally donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee. Many progressives saw these actions as hypocritical, especially coming from the CEO of what has been historically considered a very liberal-leaning company.

Yet these actions make more sense when you look at comments Cook made about his willingness to work with governments of all stripes shortly after President Trump’s first election victory in 2016.

As reported by TechCrunch in December 2016, Cook was asked by an Apple employee on an internal company message board about how important he believed it was that Apple engage with governments. The question came a week after Cook and other tech leaders met with the then-first-time president-elect. Cook answered that it was “very important,” noting, “Governments can affect our ability to do what we do. They can affect it in positive ways and they can affect in not so positive ways.”

He went on: “Personally, I’ve never found being on the sideline a successful place to be. The way that you influence these issues is to be in the arena. So whether it’s in this country, or the European Union, or in China or South America, we engage. And we engage when we agree and we engage when we disagree. I think it’s very important to do that because you don’t change things by just yelling. You change things by showing everyone why your way is the best.”

In the years since making these comments, Cook has proven this answer wasn’t just lip service. Throughout Trump’s first term, Cook frequently engaged with the president—and because of it, he got Trump to exempt Chinese-sourced components critical to Apple’s products from the tariffs Trump raised against Chinese imports in 2019. This potentially saved Apple billions—and probably saved Americans from paying more for iPhones.

Further proof that Cook has learned how to deal with Trump successfully comes from Trump himself. As CNN reported in November 2019, Trump had been asked earlier in the year why he seemed to have such a special relationship with Cook.

“Oh, I have it with everybody, but he’s the one that calls me,” Trump answered. “You know why? That’s why he’s a great executive because he calls me, and others don’t. Others go out and hire very expensive consultants, and Tim Cook calls Donald Trump directly. Pretty good. And I would take their call, too, but the only one that calls me is Tim Cook.”

“I helped Tim Cook recently”

This close attention that Cook pays to Trump is likely one of the reasons why Trump took a call from Cook in October 2024. Cook was reaching out to express his concerns about recent financial penalties the EU levied against Apple, to the tune of around $14 billion. The BBC reported that Trump told Cook that he would not let the European Union “take advantage of our companies” (but noted that in order to make good on that Apple-friendly promise, he first needed to get elected again).

And just last week, there was more evidence—again directly from Trump—that Cook has successfully used his relationship with the president to achieve other favorable outcomes for Apple. On April 11, the Trump administration announced tariff exemptions for certain electronic goods imported from China, including Apple’s iPhones and computers, thus sparing the Cupertino company from a tariff bill of up to 145% for each item imported. A few days later, as noted by 9to5Mac, when Trump talked about his flexibility concerning the tariffs he has imposed, he seemed to allude to the recent exemptions being done, at least in part, to help Cook.

“Look, I’m a very flexible person. I don’t change my mind, but I’m flexible,” Trump said. “And you have to be. You just can’t have a wall, and you’ll only go—no, sometimes you have to go around it, under it, or above it. There’ll be maybe things coming up. I speak to Tim Cook. I helped Tim Cook recently.”

Trump didn’t explicitly say how he helped Cook, but The Washington Post reported earlier this month that Cook was heavily involved in getting Apple, and others in the U.S. tech industry, an exemption from Trump’s most recent tariffs. The White House denied that Trump did any specific favors for Cook. Still, Trump’s comments again show that he, the most powerful person in the world, seems proud of being able to help Cook out. That likely wouldn’t be the case if Apple’s CEO hadn’t so skillfully managed his relationship with Trump over the years. 

“Tim has a very good relationship with the president, and rightly so . . .,” Wilbur Ross, Trump’s commerce secretary during his first term, told the Post. “In general, he has a lot of respect because he’s not a public whiner, he’s not a crybaby, but comes with the real voice of reality. It’s no surprise to me that his suggestions are being well received.”

The president whisperer

All of this shows that Tim Cook has a better relationship with the president than most other tech CEOs who are not involved politically with his administration.

That is an extremely powerful advantage for Apple during an era becoming defined by the worst economic uncertainty America has seen since the pandemic. Trump is unpredictable, and unpredictability is very bad for companies. However, Cook’s relationship with the president seems to go a long way in helping Apple mitigate the risks associated with that unpredictability.

That’s something Apple can’t afford to lose right now. 

It is highly unlikely that a new CEO—even one from Apple’s excellent executive team—would be able to re-create the relationship Cook has deftly cultivated with Trump for almost a decade now. During that period, Cook has gone from just being the “ops guy” CEO to being as much of a presidential whisperer as one can be—perhaps the most valuable skill any American businessperson can have today. 

For Apple’s sake, Tim Cook would do well to stay put, at least for the next four years.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91319020/apple-needs-tim-cook-trump-steve-jobs-tarriffs-supply-chain-ceo-succession?partner=rss&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=rss+fastcompany&utm_content=rss