For America's brands, the second Trump administration has been a field of rakes lying in wait to give them black eyes. But unlike most rakes, these have big red flags telling you where they are. Which makes it even more surprising and disappointing that the purveyor of one of America's shiniest and strongest brands keeps stepping on them.
Apple Inc. is one of this country's flagship businesses. For the past 19 years, it has been the world's most admired company, according to surveys of executives, directors and analysts by Fortune Magazine and the consulting firm Korn Ferry.
For 13 years running, the iPhone maker has been the world's most valuable brand as measured by the consulting firm Interbrand. It's routinely considered one of the world's best employers.
For most of those 19 years as the Gallant to so many corporate Goofuses, Apple has been led by Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook, who took over from founder Steve Jobs in 2011. Succeeding such a legend would seem to be a poisoned chalice, but Cook's low-key leadership was apparently just what the company needed to carry on in the style to which it had grown accustomed under the hard-charging Jobs, if not better.
Cook, who raised money for Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election, navigated Trump 1.0 with aplomb and even a touch of bravery. At a Bloomberg Global Business forum in 2017, he criticized the administration's immigration policies, saying: "This is unacceptable. This is not who we are as a country." The worst President Donald Trump could ever do in return was call him "Tim Apple."
Trump 2.0 has been a much different story. Where once he managed to stay on Trump's good side without embarrassing himself, this time Cook has bent fully to the political winds. It hasn't been a good look. He donated $1 million of his own money to Trump's inaugural committee and attended the inauguration with a bevy of other tech CEOs. In August, he presented the award-hungry Trump with a bespoke glass-and-gold plaque and glazed the president as "one of the great and most esteemed business leaders and geniuses and innovators anywhere in the world."
Most infamously, Cook attended a private White House screening of Melania - a $40 million favor from a less-beloved brand, Amazon.com Inc., to Trump and the first lady - just hours after federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. It took days of furious criticism for Cook to finally release a milquetoast statement calling for "deescalation."
More stealthily, Apple last year killed incentives for Cook and other executives to consider the environmental impact of their decisions, Bloomberg News reported. In doing so, Apple joined a recent trend of companies backing away from climate commitments, encouraged by a US government whose official policy is that climate change is a myth.
Such commitments aren't just important for woke virtue signaling. An increasingly chaotic climate makes it harder to do business, especially for a company with global reach and supply chains such as Apple.
Nor have Cook's MAGA flirtations been nearly enough to remove Apple from the American Conservative Values ETF's list of 37 overly woke companies in which it refuses to invest. The ETF's managers say they want to "exclude companies perceived to be most hostile to conservative values without sacrificing performance." The ETF consistently lagged the S&P 500 for most of last year.
Apple's stock price has shown no obvious reaction to Cook's political stumbles, rising consistently during the Melania debacle. When other corporate leaders have celebrated Trump 2.0 by gesturing their brands into decline, Apple's perch still seems relatively safe.
But Apple's brand value did drop about 4% last year. And among American consumers, Apple's reputation is just middling. In YouGov rankings, Apple places 209th. Among tech brands, it's seventh, between Dell and Windows. With a little more spine and forethought, Cook can avoid further black eyes. There's no value in finding out how many more it can take.
(The author is a Bloomberg Opinion editor and columnist)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
