Last week, the “American Technology Council” held a summit with the “Who’s Who” of American technology companies CEOs. These leaders in the tech community were allowed a forum to pitch some of the best new American created technology to the President Trump and officials at the White House.
One troubling aspect of the pitch that German Software giant SAP was given an opportunity to sell Trump on all the great things they can do to improve American government technology. This was a summit that included the titans of American innovation – Apple, Oracle, Microsoft and Google.
Why would this summit intended to promote an America First economic model invite a German company to pitch the White House on providing taxpayer funded services to the U.S. government? Makes no sense.
A German company should not have been invited to the event. The company, SAP America, sent CEO Bill McDermott to pitch President Trump and head of the innovation effort, Jared Kushner. This German company is impressive, yet outsourcing computing services to a foreign country – especially a country that is protectionist with regard to certain sectors of the economy, seems inconsistent with the whole goal of the “American Technology Council.”
German Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel, leading a government review of Chinese investment in German companies was quoted by Reuters on January 9, 2017 saying “one cannot sacrifice German companies and German jobs on the alter of open markets.” Although Germany promotes itself as being pro-free trade, when the rubber hits the road, they are not.
According to the SAP official web site: “In 1972, five entrepreneurs in Germany had a vision for the business potential of technology. Starting with one customer and a handful of employees, SAP set out on a path that would not only transform the world of information technology, but also forever alter the way companies do business. Now, 45 years and approximately 345,000 customers stronger, more than ever, SAP is fueled by the pioneering spirit that inspired its founders to continually transform the IT industry.” They have created a subsidiary in the United States “SAP America,” yet all the revenue flows right back to Germany.
Germany’s reputation as being free trade is contradicted in certain circumstances industries. Right now, no competitors to SAP exceed 2% of market share in Germany or even 1/3 or less market share anywhere in Western Europe thus protecting the German companies from outside competitors. None of our American based software companies are competing with SAP on their home turf, but we have invited them right into the inner circle of the White House. Maybe we could learn a thing or two from Germany we hand over the keys to our government technology to a foreign company.
This is completely inconsistent with an America First trade policy and flies in the face of President Trump’s quest to make America Great Again. It also violates the idea of trade reciprocity. We should treat other countries as they treat us. We should not engage in unilateral trade disarmament when dealing with nations who discriminate against American companies.
The SAP CEO suggested the Germany software company could sell the White House a 'digital cabinet room' of some sort with which Trump could constantly be in touch with or monitor the activities of his cabinet secretaries.
No matter how great the SAP technology might be, it’s not like we don’t have some pretty impressive tech companies with American addresses. At the very same meeting our titans of American innovation were in attendance: Apple CEO Tim Cook, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Oracle co-CEO Safra Catz and Eric Schmidt, executive chair and Google’s parent company, Alphabet.
Allowing SAP even a hint that we would use their technology sounds like an idea from the globalist Obama Administration. Outsourcing national security information, or any U.S. government functions for that matter to a German owned company is ridiculous.
President Trump ran on American jobs and American greatness. This German company should not even be allowed an opportunity to take on such a critical role in America’s technology, let alone digital access to monitor the activities of all of the U.S. Cabinet Secretaries.
First, it’s the Russians and their nefarious hacking. Now Germany gets a shot at controlling our inner circle cabinet level programming. What’s next, invite Jack Ma of Alibaba to work on our defense technology?
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