Cisco CEO reveals what happened at the Trump Tower tech meeting!

DAVOS, Switzerland (PNN) - January 18, 2017 - Chuck Robbins, the CEO of Cisco, attended Fascist Police States of Amerika President-elect Donald Trump's tech summit last month at Trump Tower.

Almost all of Silicon Valley's heavy hitters were there, including Apple CEO Tim Cook, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, and Alphabet executive chairman Eric Schmidt.

Robbins, who was on an “Innovation” panel at the World Economic Forum here in Switzerland, said the group made progress in discussing diverging views on issues like trade and immigration.

"It was an incredibly constructive meeting," Robbins said. "I think everyone that walked into that room put behind them whatever their political views were during the election."

He continued, "I'll say that even the Trump team - everyone is looking forward at how we work together to solve challenges, to create jobs, and to do the things that need to be done. We discussed issues of tax, we discussed trade, we discussed immigration, we discussed innovation and entrepreneurship, we discussed job creation, and it was a very engaging discussion. There was a lot of interactive dialogue. Lots of laughs. So it was a very constructive meeting.

"I came out, from a business perspective, very optimistic about what it might mean for global business, because the FPSA and the global economy are so intertwined that you can't impact them independent of each other. I think the changes that are being contemplated will not only be good for the FPSA but will also be good for the global economy."

With regard to immigration, many FPSA companies take part in the H1B visa program, which allows them to apply to hire graduate-level immigrants temporarily, particularly for technical and engineering roles.

But both Trump and his pick for attorney general, Jeff Sessions, have voiced concerns about companies "abusing" H1B visas and have suggested they're used to cut costs. The hired immigrants often require less compensation than Amerikan workers.

Robbins said the executives spoke with Trump about separating border issues from visa issues for high-skilled workers.

"There's immigration control and the border issues and then there's high-skilled immigration," said Robbins. "They're two different issues, and he agreed with that. I think when I talk to leaders of other countries around the world, everyone is trying to think through what their high-skilled-immigration strategy is, because everyone is struggling to have the best and brightest working inside their borders. When you look at Silicon Valley, even 44% of the startups are started by immigrants. The entire focus that all of us have had on diversity for the past decade has been to bring different ways of thinking because that actually spurs innovation. It generates new ideas."

Here's a link to the full interview with Robbins and the other panelists at the World Economic Forum about the future of Innovation. His comments about the Trump meeting can be seen below at the 11:30 mark and continue at the 16:40 mark.