At the big CES trade show, Consumer Technology Association chief Gary Shapiro says the industry isn’t at odds with the president-elect on everything, though most in Silicon Valley didn’t vote for him. Also: Amazon puts up some big numbers in the banana giveaway business.
The exhibit space at CES was filled this past week with the products of globalization.
Televisions and computers, many produced cheaply on factory floors in East Asia, are on sale for a fraction of the price that caliber of technology would have cost decades ago.
Conglomerates with global brand names detached from their country of origin dominate the show. Samsung. Lenovo. LG. Intel. Their supply chains, from Hanoi to Taipei to California, are designed for a world in which free trade is paramount, and goods and people cross borders with few hurdles.
Yet the United States has elected a potential challenger to the order of things here: Donald Trump, who as a candidate criticized unfettered free trade and had some harsh words for China, the largest maker of consumer electronics.
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Gary Shapiro, one of the chief lobbyists for the U.S. technology industry, isn’t worried. The president of the Consumer Technology Association, the trade group that puts on CES, said in an interview before the show that he’s upbeat about the prospects for his industry under the new administration.
“The truth is Trump needs tech, and tech needs Trump,” he said. “There’s more of a parallel agenda than you would imagine.”
Shapiro said he was heartened by the president-elect’s meeting with top U.S. technology executives last month, and particularly with Trump’s public embrace of innovation, among industry’s favorite buzzwords.
Shapiro acknowledges that his optimistic tone runs contrary to the opinion of many of the rank-and-file within the U.S. technology industry, generally a socially liberal group.
“It’s no secret that tech didn’t go overwhelmingly for Trump,” Shapiro said. “Some of that is social issues. Some of that is Clinton came out with a tech agenda, Trump didn’t.”
Shapiro highlighted a few of his hopes for policies from the new administration.
Lower taxes: Technology giants are the largest holders of cash abroad to avoid paying the U.S. corporate tax rate, which is among the highest in the world. Business lobbyists are hoping for a lower tax rate, or a window in which companies could repatriate cash held abroad at a special lower rate.
Immigration reform: The technology industry relies on foreign guest workers, many of whom are in the country on H-1B visas. They’ve long lobbied for an increase in the cap on the number of people in that program, and Trump, Shapiro says, seems responsive to a bill that would do that. The Obama Administration had tied potential tweaks to guest worker visas to a broader overhaul of the U.S. immigration system.
Less regulation: Executives at CTA member companies have told the lobbying group their No. 1 issue in Washington, D.C., is too much government regulation, Shapiro says. He attributes that to the requirements of Obama’s Affordable Care Act, as well as a Labor Department push to cover more workers with provisions like overtime pay and paid benefits. That, Shapiro says, runs counter to the wishes of the leaders of tech startups, which often feature irregular hours and don’t have much cash to work with. Meanwhile, larger companies, from on-demand ride-hailing service Uber to Microsoft, have structured their business in part on the use of contract workers rather than full time employees.
As for the chance that a Trump-ignited trade war with China would undercut the model that put cheap television sets on the CES floor? Shapiro isn’t worried.
“Obviously that’s not something that we would support,” he said. “Certainly we’re interested in having good trade deals. In terms of proposals to add import fees and things like that? I do think that what Trump is saying, is this is a tool we can use as a last resort, a bit of a penalty if they’re not playing by the rules.”
— Matt Day: mday@seattletimes.com
Yes, Amazon has bananas
Like many Amazon.com ventures, the e-commerce behemoth’s attempt to keep Seattle pedestrians well supplied with free bananas came out of CEO Jeff Bezos’ imagination.
And like book sales or the Prime loyalty program, the banana enterprise, too, has seen momentous growth since it launched in December 2015.
Last November, Amazon’s “banistas” — as the people who staff the so-called “Community Banana Stand” program are known — handed out their one-millionth banana.
Business certainly has ramped up. An initial run rate of 1,200 bananas a day from a single stand in South Lake Union has blossomed into an average of 4,500 bananas a day distributed at that stand and at an additional location next to Amazon’s new towers in the Denny Regrade.
That’s 1.17 million bananas a year — or about 39 per Amazon employee, if one were to estimate that there are 30,000 Amazonians in the area. Of course, anyone can go there for a free banana, so that means about 2 bananas, per annum, for every Seattleite.
Like many of Amazon’s famously-guarded metrics, the numbers generated by the banana stand remain somewhat shrouded in mystery. A video posted by Amazon l Thursday claims the banana stand “was originally conceived by Jeff Bezos.” But it didn’t say much else.
When prompted for more details — why bananas, as opposed to any other fruit, for instance — Amazon simply responded: “Why not? Bananas are healthy and come with their own protective, easy to remove, compostable packaging.”
They’re also popular: Consider that they’re the most popular item sold at Amazon archrival Wal-Mart, which moves 1 billion pounds per year. But not free.
Amazon says its stands are open Monday through Friday, and staff will give free bananas to everyone.
“Anyone can come off the street. employees, nonemployees, children, dogs,” a “banista” said in the Amazon video.
— Ángel González, agonzalez@seattletimes.com