Did Tim Cook and Elon Musk Pull a Trump on Trump?
The Business of America Is Business
-Calvin Coolidge
Donald Trump has made a fortune by selling his name.
According to the Washington Post, Trump companies have made at least $59 million in revenue.
Here's one of the Washington Post's examples:
In Indonesia, Trump has licensed his name to two projects — a luxury resort and a golf course — for which he earned between $1 million and $5 million each project, each year.
Now Apple (AAPL) CEO Tim Cook and Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk may be running the same game on Trump — selling their names in the name of business.
The Washington Post reported that Trump is about to announce “The White House Office of American Innovation,” which is aimed at bringing fresh business-like thinking to Washington.
Supposedly the office is already working with Cook, Musk, and Salesforce (CRM) CEO Mark Benioff.
After the failure of the healthcare bill on Friday, Trump needs more credibility.
Association with tech leaders like Cook and Musk gives him that. Dropping those names when introducing new legislation would be a huge selling point.
And odds are, there will be some payback, especially since Trump seems to love everyone that sits down with him.
Remember his January 31 meeting with pharma CEO's? The talk about price controls seemed to dissipate pretty quickly.
So what could Cook and Musk get out of Trump?
Well, there's a lot of chatter that having a big personal connection in the White House could help Apple make even more headway in the education market.
But I think the real story is the potential repatriation of overseas cash.
Apple's sitting on $246 billion in cash, but $230 billion of it is sitting overseas doing nothing.
Cook has said that he's optimistic about some kind of tax reform including repatration this year, and buddying up with Trump can only help that process.
As for Musk, I imagine that Trump could keep government subsidies flowing for electric cars.
There's also potential for some of Tesla's non-car initiatives, like its energy story solutions, to make their way into Trump's infrastructure package.
And then there's Solar City (SCTY), Musk's solar panel company. I can't imagine that company would hurt by ties to Trump.
So Cook and Musk may have struck great deals.
They're selling their names to help Trump build credibility for business-related legislation.
And their companies will probably collect big-time cash on the back end.