Just weeks after the U.S. Justice Department filed a sweeping antitrust lawsuit against Apple, accusing the iPhone giant of operating an illegal monopoly in the smartphone market, Apple CEO Tim Cook flew to Washington.

As the CEO of a company facing a serious legal challenge from the government, Cook might be expected to take an adversarial stance with the Biden administration. Apple in fact had responded aggressively to the lawsuit, saying it “threatens who we are” and would “set a dangerous precedent, empowering government to take a heavy hand in designing people’s technology.” But on this April trip to Washington, Cook employed a different strategy. Clad in a tuxedo and waving to a crowd of journalists, he strolled into the White House for an official state dinner honoring the prime minister of Japan.

Over a menu of house-cured salmon and salted caramel pistachio cake, Cook had the opportunity to hobnob with Cabinet members, administration officials, and Biden family members, buying Apple some goodwill in a capital that’s become increasingly hostile to its interests. He also had access to officials from Japan, which was considering legislation to force platforms like Apple to allow third-party app stores and payment systems—or face massive fines.

The White House dinner provides a vivid illustration of how the soft-spoken Cook, who has led Apple since 2011, operates as the company’s lobbyist-in-chief, conducting face-to-face diplomacy with governments around the world as he seeks to defuse threats to Apple’s business model and protect the company’s bottom line. While other American CEOs have visited the White House and at times deal directly with regulators at home and abroad, Cook stands out for the breadth of his interactions with U.S. and foreign officials—and for the central role he plays in Apple’s influence operation. 

Cook has spent the past few years cultivating ties with the Biden administration, but the looming U.S. election is not likely to impede his efforts. Cook was known for having direct access to President Trump during the Trump administration, a fact that Trump remembers fondly. Meanwhile, Lisa Jackson, a top Apple executive who served as head of the Environmental Protection Agency under President Obama, is a longtime donor to Kamala Harris going back to her Senate campaign, a fact that could benefit Cook if he needs to make inroads with a future Harris White House.

Today, as Apple confronts a growing list of problems, from regulatory pressure on the App Store to the impact of U.S.-China tensions on its Chinese supply chain, Cook is dialing up his damage control efforts. A Tech Transparency Project (TTP) review of White House visitor logs, corporate lobbying disclosures, European Union documents, and Chinese media reports shows how the Apple CEO is scrambling to shield his company from an unprecedented wave of global threats.

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Cook has been a regular presence at Biden White House state dinners. Along with the dinner honoring Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, he also attended dinners for French President Emmanuel Macron and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. At each dinner, Cook was accompanied by Lisa Jackson, the Apple executive and former Obama EPA director who has maintained close ties with the Biden administration.

Jackson attended another state dinner for Kenyan President William Ruto without Cook. That means Apple has been at four out of the six state dinners held by Biden so far.

The leaders honored at these dinners have a clear nexus with Apple’s business interests. Modi is a key player for Apple, which is moving to expand iPhone production in India as it tries to reduce its dependence on China. Macron is a driving force in the European Union, where Apple faces intense regulatory pressure, including an investigation of its market power and $2 billion fine for hindering music streaming rivals like Spotify. Kishida’s government led a legislative push to break Apple’s hold on the app store ecosystem. (Japan's antitrust law passed in June and will come into force in 2025.)

Cook’s efforts to build ties with the Biden administration have gone beyond these state dinners. The Apple CEO has taken part in at least 11 other events and meetings at White House since Biden took office, according to visitor logs reviewed by TTP. He has focused particular attention on Biden gatekeepers. The logs show he met with Steve Ricchetti, a trusted Biden aide and longtime Washington lobbyist who’s been dubbed the “Biden whisperer,” as well as aides to Biden’s first chief of staff, Ron Klain. Cook was at the White House the day after Biden announced Klain would step down and be replaced by Jeff Zients, giving the Apple CEO a chance to make inroads with the new chief of staff.

Cook has also held multiple meetings with aides to Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, a critical figure in the administration’s foreign policy apparatus. In January 2024, Cook met with Lael Brainard, director of the White House National Economic Council and Biden’s top economic adviser.

It’s not always clear what Cook discussed in his White House meetings, but Apple has had a long list of policy concerns since Biden took office, including a threatened import ban on some Apple Watches; the U.S.-China trade war; growing antitrust concerns about Apple’s tight control of the App Store; and the U.S. government’s effort to subject Apple Pay to the same regulatory scrutiny applied to banks and other financial institutions.

Cook also appeared at an event with Biden in late 2022 to mark construction of a new semiconductor manufacturing complex in Phoenix, Arizona. The company building the facility, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), is an Apple supplier, and the event was meant to highlight the CHIPS and Science Act, a centerpiece of Biden’s efforts to revive U.S. domestic manufacturing. (TSMC later secured $6.6 billion in CHIPS Act funding.) Cook struck a patriotic tone at the event, saying, “Thanks to the hard work of so many people, these chips can be proudly stamped ‘Made in America.’”

This was a familiar routine for Cook, who spent much of the Trump era trying to convince then-President Trump of Apple’s commitment to U.S. manufacturing, even as the company maintained the vast majority of its supply chain in China. When Cook gave Trump a tour of a Texas factory that makes Mac laptops in 2019, Cook let Trump take credit for the plant and suggest it was new, even though it was actually six years old and predated Trump’s presidency. Cook maintained a similar silence when Trump stated in 2017 that Apple planned to build “three big plants, beautiful plants” in the U.S. (The plants never materialized.) In 2017, months after Trump took office, Cook announced a $1 billion fund to support U.S. companies that do advanced manufacturing, including Corning, a supplier of touchscreens for the iPhone.

Despite tension with candidate Trump during the 2016 campaign, Cook had a remarkably successful track record of protecting and advancing Apple’s interests with the Trump administration. He made a habit of meeting directly with Trump, his daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner. When Trump imposed tariffs on roughly $200 billion in Chinese imports, the list of targeted goods spared Apple products after intense lobbying by Cook. Apple was also a big winner with the Trump tax cuts that passed in 2017.

Cook has led the charge on Apple’s lobbying effort with the Biden administration, but the company is marshaling its resources more broadly to influence Washington. Other Apple executives have been frequent visitors to the White House, with and without Cook. These include the above-mentioned Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice president of environment, policy, and social initiatives; Nick Ammann, Apple’s vice president of global policy; and Apple lobbyist Tim Powderly. The company spent close to $9.9 million on lobbying the federal government in 2023, the most of any year dating back to 1999, according to corporate disclosures. During the Trump years, Apple spent between $6.6 million and $7.4 million annually on lobbying.

Apple’s lobby spending in Washington still trails that of other Big Tech companies. Google spent $12 million on lobbying in 2023, Amazon spent $17.9 million, and Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, spent $19.3 million, disclosures show. But Apple has been steadily gaining on its tech rivals while at the same time adopting some of their well-established influence tactics, such using industry trade groups to advocate for policy positions. It marks a sharp change from Apple’s approach under previous CEO Steve Jobs, who kept Washington at arm’s length and maintained only a minimal Apple presence in D.C.

At times, Cook has turned his influence campaign on Congress. In early 2022, he personally urged senators to oppose a bill, the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, that would have barred tech platforms from giving an advantage to their own products and services over those of rivals. The measure could have created liability for Apple when it pre-installs its own apps or makes them the default on iPhones. Cook publicly criticized another bill, the Open App Markets Act, that would have forced Apple to let consumers install apps from outside the App Store. After the Senate Judiciary Committee approved both measures with bipartisan support, Cook made at least three visits to Congress, at one point reportedly holding a private lunch with then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and other Republicans. Shortly after Cook huddled with lawmakers in December 2022, the two reform bills were declared dead amid what Bloomberg News described as an “epic lobbying campaign” by Big Tech.

Under Cook, Apple has not only played defense in Congress but also pushed for legislation that serves its interests, such as a measure to restrict the power of the U.S. International Trade Commission, the federal agency that has ruled against Apple in patent disputes over Apple Watch features.

Cook has played a direct role in trying to persuade top EU regulators to spare Apple from regulation and enforcement actions. EU emails and documents obtained by TTP via public records request shed light on how Cook made his case behind the scenes.

One series of emails shows how Cook parlayed a conversation with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at the Davos World Economic Forum in Switzerland into a follow-up meeting with her on “digital policy” in March 2021. At the time, the EU was advancing a proposed competition law, the Digital Markets Act (DMA), and conducting antitrust investigations of Apple’s rules for app developers (based on a complaint from Spotify) and Apple Pay. In going to von der Leyen, Cook bypassed the commission’s antitrust chief, Margrethe Vestager, with whom he has had a testy relationship. He once slammed a tax case Vestager brought against Apple as “total political crap.”

According to an EU readout of the call with von der Leyen, Cook talked up Apple’s commitment to privacy, which he said went beyond what was required by EU regulations, and warned it could be undermined by the DMA. Von der Leyen advised Cook to take his concerns to Vestager.

By the time Cook did a video call with Vestager in June 2021, the atmosphere had grown more tense. Weeks earlier, Vestager had issued a preliminary finding that Apple’s App Store “distorted competition in the music streaming market” and “abused its dominant position.” Cook, meanwhile, had publicly criticized the Digital Markets Act in a speech to a tech conference in France, saying language in the proposed law that permitted so-called sideloading, or installing apps from outside the App Store, would “destroy the security of the iPhone.”

After Cook’s call with Vestager, Apple sent her office five pages of comments summarizing the company’s arguments against the DMA’s sideloading provision, warning among other things that it could imperil the livelihood of European app developers. The comments cited a study by a consulting firm that found European developers earned billions of dollars from the App Store, without mentioning the study was funded by Apple. Cook went on to hold several more meetings with Vestager as well as with Thierry Breton, the EU’s internal markets chief, documents show. In January 2024, Cook even hosted Vestager at the company’s futuristic headquarters building in Cupertino, California, known as the “spaceship.”

But Cook’s deep involvement with lobbying the European Commission failed to shield Apple from regulatory pressure. The EU ultimately adopted the Digital Markets Act, opened an investigation of Apple, and recently found that the company's restrictions on app developers violate the DMA, making it the first company to be charged under the new competition law. The Commission separately fined Apple nearly $2 billion over its treatment of rival music streaming apps. Apple is challenging that decision in court.

In July 2024, the Commission accepted a series of commitments from Apple to open up its mobile payment platform to competitors.

In China, too, Cook has been in heavy damage control mode. His most recent trip to the country, in March 2024, has been described as a “charm offensive,” with the CEO making a series of highly laudatory remarks about China and its manufacturing capabilities. The trip appeared to have a two-fold goal: shoring up Apple’s flagging iPhone sales in China and reassuring President Xi Jinping and his government of the importance of Apple’s Chinese supply chain, even as Apple expands production in India and other countries.

Cook opened a new Apple store in a splashy event in Shanghai, seeking to boost Chinese consumer interest in the iPhone and other company products. Apple’s slumping sales in China, one of its biggest markets, are a major concern for the company and its investors. Apple's latest quarterly results, announced Aug. 1, showed that sales from its Greater China segment fell 6.5 percent to $14.7 billion, below analyst expectations. Apple’s China business is a sensitive issue for Cook. Apple this year agreed to pay nearly half a billion dollars to settle a class action lawsuit over allegations that Cook misled investors about a China sales drop in 2018.

The Apple CEO repeatedly lavished praise on China and its manufacturing base during his visit. According to the state-run China Daily, Cook, while attending an event with some of Apple’s Chinese suppliers, said China is Apple's most critical supply chain. Cook also gushed that the suppliers have “the most advanced manufacturing in the world,” the report noted. Days later, the Apple CEO made effusive comments about China while exiting an economic development forum in Beijing. In a video tweeted by a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, Cook said, “It’s so vibrant and so dynamic here.”

One of the Chinese suppliers that Cook highlighted on his trip was iPhone glass maker Lens Technology. Cook met with the company’s founder and chair, Zhou Qunfei, who reportedly talked about the challenges of developing cover glass for Apple’s new Vision Pro mixed-reality headset. The Apple CEO appeared to have no issues promoting his company’s association with Lens Tech, despite a 2021 TTP investigation which found that the supplier used thousands of Uighur laborers from the Xinjiang region under China’s forced labor program. (Apple told the Washington Post at the time that it had confirmed Lens Tech did not receive Uighur labor transfers from Xinjiang, despite video evidence to the contrary unearthed by TTP.)

The Chinese government frequently highlights Cook’s positive comments about China. The Chinese Ministry of Commerce said the Apple CEO, while meeting with Commerce Minister Wang Wentao in March, praised China’s innovation and said Apple would increase investment in its supply chain, research and development, and sales in the country. The People’s Daily, the official mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, described similar comments by Cook after he met with Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang in October 2023. According to the newspaper, the Apple CEO expressed confidence in the Chinese market and said he was willing to strengthen cooperation in high-end manufacturing.

Cook’s campaign of flattery reflects the tight spot Apple faces in China. As the U.S.-China rivalry increases geopolitical tensions, Apple’s heavy reliance on Chinese manufacturing creates new vulnerabilities for the company. Cook, who masterminded the outsourcing of Apple’s production to China, is now engaged in a high-stakes effort to shift some production to other countries while not angering the Chinese leadership in the process. After spending days making glowing comments about China, Cook went on to visit other Asian countries, including Vietnam, where Apple announced it would increase spending on suppliers, and Indonesia, where Cook said he would look at the country’s manufacturing potential.

While Cook did not appear to join other U.S. executives at a high-profile meeting with President Xi in March, the Apple CEO has met with the Chinese leader multiple times over the years. Last November, Cook attended a gala reception and dinner for Xi in San Francisco during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders’ summit. Cook sat at Xi’s table with other prominent U.S. business leaders, and it was a pay-to-play situation: A seat at Xi’s table plus a table of eight at the event reportedly cost $40,000.