Tim Cook Is Stepping Down as Apple’s CEO. He’s Keeping the Most Important Job–For Now

But there is one line, right up there in the second paragraph, that explains why Cook isn’t quite leaving yet. “As executive chairman,” the press release says, “Cook will assist with certain aspects of the companyincluding engaging with policymakers around the world.”

“Policymakers around the world” is polite corporate language for a very specific problem: Apple’s survival depends on staying in the good graces of two governments that increasingly want different things from it. Cook is the person who knows how to manage that—maybe better than anyone on earth. And—for now—Apple has decided that this is not a job it can hand to the new guy.

Look, Ternus is a brilliant hardware engineer who has spent 25 years obsessing over the products in Apple’s lineup. He oversaw the iPhone Air, the MacBook Neo, AirPods as hearing aids, and the silicon transition that remade the Mac. I don’t think anyone would argue he isn’t exactly the right person to run Apple’s product engine—and probably the company as a whole. He is, however, not the person who will have to sit across from the President of the United States explaining why a tariff exemption is good for American jobs.

That person is still Tim Cook.

This isn’t a critique of Ternus’ qualifications, by the way. Instead, it’s a recognition of something rare in corporate America. Cook has spent a decade building his diplomatic skills, something that is genuinely difficult to learn. It’s also something that is almost impossible to transfer. But the ability to maintain personal relationships with political leaders whose demands on Apple are often contradictory, often unreasonable, is maybe the most important job at Apple right now.

The Trump administration’s tariffs on Chinese-manufactured goods threatened Apple’s margins in a way that no competitor or product failure ever had. Apple’s supply chain, assembled over decades, was built around manufacturing infrastructure in China that cannot be relocated in a quarter. I’m not sure you could do it in a decade.