Alphabet’s Larry Page and Eric Schmidt will be there too, as will Apple’s Tim Cook, according to people familiar with the matter.
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Top Silicon Valley tech executives are invited to attend summit at Trump Tower.
Among those confirmed to attend were Facebook’s chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg and Oracle chief executive Safra Catz, those companies said.
It could be a prickly meeting. Trump also picked on IBM in November, saying that it “laid off 500 workers in Minneapolis and moved their jobs to India and various other countries”. Not only this, dozens of Executives signed an open letter opposing his candidacy as the next President of United States.
‘We are going to invest $50 billion in the USA and commit to create 50,000 new jobs, ‘ Son told reporters with Trump standing by.
In an industry that lives on the cutting edge of technology, and sometimes beyond that, any delay in filling such positions, a loss of skilled labour and more, all of this represents a bad loss for the Valley.
Entrepreneur Mark Cuban, who criticized Trump on several occasions and backed Hillary Clinton in her presidential campaign, Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman, and Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, were not invited.
An invitation went out last week from members of Trump’s transition team, including venture capitalist Peter Thiel.
The tech industry and Trump administration could clash over some important issues like net neutrality and immigration. That said, the combustive proposition of having Trump sitting across from Sandberg, Cook, Musk and Bezos is terrifying.
Trump’s attitude toward the tech industry is unclear so far.
The meeting with Trump, scheduled for 2 p.m. on December 14, will likely focus on possible repatriation of overseas earnings and corporate tax reform, said Rob Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.
“Trump even called for a boycott of Apple after it refused to unlock an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters”, the report noted. Catz also said tax code reforms, a reduction in regulation, and better trade deals would make the US technology sector “stronger and more competitive than ever”.
Late last month, a group of 17 tech associations offered to work with Trump while calling for policies to “foster growth and innovation”. The letter also appealed to Trump’s emphasis on the economy, citing statistics estimating that the internet sector accounted for almost $1 trillion of the country’s gross domestic product. While the attendees were under the impression that the media’s access to Trump was to be discussed, instead they “got an earful from Trump”.
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In an attempt to show that he is not going to neglect the tech industry once he assumed office, President-elect Donald Trump is hosting a tech summit. Also on the agenda is how tech companies can help make government operate more efficiently. CEO Elon Musk, and both the CEO and chairman of Google parent.
