President Trump avoids tech in State of the Union address

“President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address Tuesday covered a wide range of issues, from the economy to criminal justice and immigration to drug prices,” Monica Nickelsburg reports for GeekWire. “But he rarely referenced the tech industry despite a series of high-profile scandals, breaches, and controversies that have thrust Big Tech into the national political discourse over the past year.”
“There was speculation that Trump might bring up his often-cited grievances with the tech industry or even include a mention of broadband access when discussing his infrastructure agenda. The closest Trump came to a tech industry issue, however, was the U.S. trade war with China,” Nickelsburg reports. “‘We are now making it clear to China that after years of targeting our industries and stealing our intellectual property, the theft of American jobs and wealth has come to an end,’ Trump said. He added, ‘we recently imposed tariffs on $250 billion of Chinese goods and now our Treasury is receiving billions and billions of dollars.'”
“Trump also touched on the Republican tax overhaul passed in 2017, which was financially backed by many in the tech industry,” Nickelsburg reports. “But Trump’s speech did not cover data privacy, net neutrality, or other major tech industry issues that have made headlines over the past year…”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: It’s likely that the lack of mention of privacy issues was as disappointing to Apple CEO Tim Cook as the talk of mitigating intellectual property theft by China was heartening.
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