Apple wants Chinese memory chips, Micron wants them blocked: How US government is caught between two American giants, and why a $250 million cheque matters
Apple has spent weeks trying to convince the White House to let it buy memory chips from China. Micron has spent the same weeks trying to make sure that never happens. As The Wall Street Journal reports, the lobbying war has now landed on President Donald Trump's desk, and it sets two of America's biggest companies against each other with no tidy way out.
Per the WSJ, Tim Cook and senior Apple executives have pitched Trump, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on a plan to use chips from ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) and Yangtze Memory Technologies (YMTC) in Apple devices sold outside the United States. Micron, the only sizeable American memory maker left, has been working the same officials in the opposite direction. CEO Sanjay Mehrotra has warned that letting Chinese memory firms into US supply chains — regardless of where the finished product ships — could gut the domestic industry the way cheap imports gutted American steel.
Per the WSJ, Tim Cook and senior Apple executives have pitched Trump, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on a plan to use chips from ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) and Yangtze Memory Technologies (YMTC) in Apple devices sold outside the United States. Micron, the only sizeable American memory maker left, has been working the same officials in the opposite direction. CEO Sanjay Mehrotra has warned that letting Chinese memory firms into US supply chains — regardless of where the finished product ships — could gut the domestic industry the way cheap imports gutted American steel.
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