Whatever Trump decides on tariffs, Apple and Tim Cook lose

The last time I was around Tim Cook, I was screaming, "Queer kids need you" at the top of my lungs. Holding signs asking him to stop selling unsafe phones to kids, our team at the Heat Initiative — a nonprofit working to keep kids safe online — tried calling on someone who we thought was one of the last Big Tech CEOs with a heart. Being the first openly gay man to head a Fortune 500 company, I hoped he would shatter the glass ceiling, allowing more young LGBTQ+ people to envision a similar path of excellence. Instead, he carved out just enough space for him to step through, sealing it back up and joining the other tech oligarchs in their pristine detachment from the rest of society. 

The Big Tech oligarchy was front and center at Trump’s inauguration, showing Americans who were really about to run our country. Watching Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg play teacher’s pet was expected. But Cook donating $1 million to Trump’s inauguration was a shock. Until then, I had relatively neutral-to-positive things to say about Cook’s leadership. I hoped the company’s failure to keep kids safe on their devices and platforms would end up being one of the rare black spots in Cook's rather impressive corporate history. One thing has become abundantly clear: Child safety is no longer the only black spot in Cook’s time at Apple. Tim Cook himself is harming Apple’s reputation. 

Trump’s tariffs have been getting a lot of air time. Given that they impact working-class Americans' lives, I hoped my dissenting opinion on them would be proven wrong. After all, the idea of more manufacturing in the U.S. sounds good, I just think that using the livelihoods of Americans as a bargaining tool is wrong.

But tech giants like Apple are also being hammered by the tariffs, with their stock price see-sawing thanks to Trump's chaotic policy. It was refreshing to see that these attacks were not just happening to our most vulnerable, but also to our most powerful — including a giant corporation that has not done enough to protect vulnerable populations, like kids and LGBTQ+ Americans, from online dangers. Thanks to the tariffs, Cook's $1 million suck up donation to Trump was turning out to be a waste. 

That was short lived. Suddenly, smartphones were now temporarily exempt from the tariffs, proving once again that it really is that easy to buy favors from the leader of the "free" world. With the exemption, presented to the public as a way to protect Americans' accessibility to devices, Cook could rest easy knowing that his stock price would bounce back and his and his stockholders' pockets would continue to fill. Then, Trump equivocated again, calling the exemption temporary. Maybe Cook's $1 million wasn't enough? Or maybe having a strong moral code, and standing up for what (and who) is right, is good business sense in the end.

This past weekend, Cook’s alma mater, Auburn University, celebrated their famous alumni day. My team and I were on the ground, with a hilarious parody blimp of Cook holding money bags and a phone that says "profits over kids," talking to people on campus. We connected with an engineer that geeked out about hash matching technology, a privacy forward technology to detect known child sexual abuse material; a family talking about the regret of giving their daughter a phone too early; and young people aware of their iPhone addiction.

I miss the feeling of being excited about Apple’s newest technology. Here’s hoping Cook, thanks to Trump's treatment, has an epiphany and transforms back into the leader we know he should be. 

Lennon Torres is a Public Voices Fellow on Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse with The OpEd Project. She is an LGBTQ+ advocate who grew up in the public eye, gaining national recognition as a young dancer on television shows. With a deep passion for storytelling, advocacy, and politics, Lennon now works to center the lived experience of herself and others as she crafts her professional career in online child safety at Heat Initiative. Lennon’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennon-torres-325b791b4/