U.S. President-elect Donald Trump speaks as (2nd L to R) PayPal co-founder and Facebook board member Peter Thiel, Apple Inc CEO Tim Cook and Oracle CEO Safra Catz look on during a meeting with technology leaders at Trump Tower in New York U.S., December 14, 2016. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
NEW YORK (Diya TV) — After he was paged by the tech world’s most elite, President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday promised to do “anything we can do” to help the industry he often spoke out against while on the campaign trail.
“This is truly an amazing group of people,” Trump said at Trump Tower to kick off a meeting with Silicon Valley’s top leaders. “I want to add that I’m here to help you folks do well.”
A dozen of Silicon Valley’s most respected tech figures — Apple CEO Tim Cook, Alphabet CEO Larry Page, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, IBM CEO Ginni Rometty and Intel CEO Brian Krzanich, among them — joined the President-elect for a two-hour meeting, where they discussed jobs, immigration policy, China, cybersecurity and taxes.
Trump told the group that his administration is “going to be here for you. You’ll call my people, you’ll call me. We have no formal chain of command around here.”
The assembled tech leaders agreed to Trump’s idea to hold similar meetings, as a group, on a quarterly basis, according to a report by USA TODAY, citing a source who was speaking on the terms of anonymity.
Cook and Musk were scheduled to meet privately with Trump later.
Notably absent, however, was Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who invented what possibly is Trump’s favorite app. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg did not attend, but Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg did.
Trump wants the tech industry “to keep going with the incredible innovation,” he said. “There’s nobody like you in the world. There’s nobody like the people in this room.” Last year, the consumer tech sector generated $3.5 trillion in economic output and accounted for more than 15 million people, or 8.4% of total U.S. employment, according to the Consumer Technology Association.
