President elect Bush talks tech with execs

Education, trade regulation and Internet privacy issues were expected to be some of the topics that a group of at least 15 U.S. high-tech executives conveyed to President-elect George W. Bush during an economic forum Thursday in Austin, Texas.

Many of the leaders, such as Craig Barrett, CEO of Intel, Michael Dell, chairman and CEO of Dell and Lou Gerstner, chairman and CEO of IBM, supported Bush in his election battle against Vice President Al Gore.

The leaders of companies in the hardware, software, Internet and services arenas were expected to attend the afternoon meeting at the campus of the University of Texas. The president elect held the meeting to discuss his economic agenda and the state of the current economy, Bush officials said in a statement.

After the meeting, Bush conveyed that the high technology industry can again lead the country to more prosperous times, according to an Associated Press report.

"I do think people that have invested in this industry are in the long term going to realize good gains on the money they have invested because this is the leading edge of thought in the world," Bush said, according to the report. "These good folks are revolutionizing how business is conducted."

For Intel, Barrett was expected to convey support for bringing China into the World Trade Organization, spokesman Chuck Mulloy said. Intel has met with members of Congress and worked through industry groups in the past to try and bring this goal to fruition, he said. Intel also is seeking greater trade agreements with Latin America, Mulloy said.

"This is a global market and the tech sector is an increasing global market," he said. "Fully 60% of our revenue comes from outside the U.S., but 70% of our jobs are here."

Hardware maker Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina was expected to speak with Bush about the U.S. workforce and changing immigration laws to allow more high-tech workers into the country, said Mary Deebeall, a consultant for HP who assisted Fiorina with her comments to the president elect.

More can be done to streamline the immigration process to help the immediate worker shortage, she said. In the long term, the U.S. education system needs to be improved, particularly in the areas of math and science, to better prepare students when they get to the university level and, ultimately, for the public and private sector, Deebeall said.

Richard Egan, CEO for data-storage provider EMC, may have conveyed his and the company's support for bolstering education and education systems to better build the skilled labor pool, said Dana Buchbinder, an EMC spokeswoman. Finding skilled labor is a top priority for the rapidly growing company that expects to hire an estimated 10,000 employees during 2001, she said.

Other topics that were expected to surface were international copyright protection and software piracy, tax law changes and regulatory issues. Also at the meeting were executives from Oracle, Cisco, Sun, Autodesk, ClickAction, Ariba, Sage Software, The Barksdale Group, Agillion and venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers.

Several of those who attended the closed-door meeting with Bush on Thursday provided the Republican party with generous donations during the 2000 election season. The executives made the contributions as private citizens.

John Chambers, Cisco CEO and president, donated $372,000 total to candidates, $304,000 of which went to Republicans, according to figures from the Center for Responsive Politics in Washington, D.C., a campaign finance watchdog organization. He gave $1,000 directly to the Bush campaign.

Michael Dell gave $266,000 to candidates and all of it went to Republicans. He donated $2,000 to Bush. Jim Barksdale, former president of Netscape and founder of the early-stage funding company the Barksdale Group, donated $157,000 in total to candidates and $153,000 went to Republicans. Barksdale gave $2,000 to the Bush campaign, according to Center for Responsive Politics figures.

"Overall, the executives that were in the meeting today have contributed some money and most of their contributions have been directed to Republicans," said Steven Weiss, communications director for the Center for Responsive Politics. "The lesson is that if you pony up during the campaign they will get more face time with the candidate in the future."

Besides meeting with technology leaders Thursday, Bush also named three Cisco employees to serve on his education, commerce and telecom transition teams, which will be focused on developing the president elect's legislative agenda, Cisco said in a statement. Chambers was selected to serve on Bush's education committee, while Laura Ipsen, director of government affairs, and Bruce Mehlman, government relations manager, will serve on the commerce and telecom teams.