Trump And Tech Leaders To Meet Next Week After Divisive Campaign

Tech leaders and president-elect Donald Trump will allegedly have a roundtable meeting next week in New York, USA Today reported.

The invitation for the get-together on Dec. 14 was sent by Reince Priebus, Trump’s chief of staff; Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law; and transition team adviser Peter Thiel, who is a Silicon Valley investor, entrepreneur, cofounder of PayPal and a Facebook board member. The tech leaders attending have not been announced.

The invitation comes after a divisive presidential election in which the tech industry was betting on Hillary Clinton. The sector is now looking to build bridges with Trump’s administration. After the election, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff congratulated Trump on Twitter, while Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella did so on LinkedIn. Apple CEO Tim Cook called Trump to congratulate him, he told the New York Times.

But Trump has had some feuds with the tech industry during his campaign.

The president-elect tweeted against Apple during its battle with the FBI over the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino shooters in which the company refused to unlock the device.

“Boycott all Apple products until such time as Apple gives cellphone info to authorities regarding radical Islamic terrorist couple from Cal,” Trump tweeted in February.

“I use both iPhone & Samsung. If Apple doesn't give info to authorities on the terrorists I'll only be using Samsung until they give info,” he added.

He also called Apple out for making their products overseas. Apple CEO Tim Cook previously said the U.S. did not have enough skilled workers for the manufacturing of iPhones.

"To make iPhones, there will need to be a cluster of suppliers in the same place, which the U.S. does not have at the moment," he said in a 60 Minutes interview.

"Even if Trump imposes a 45 percent tariff, it is still possible that manufacturers will decide to continue production overseas as long as the costs together with the tariffs are lower than the amount they need to spend on building and running production lines in the U.S," he added.

However, according to recent rumors, Apple could be looking into manufacturing their devices in the U.S.