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.
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Why Apple is chasing Chinese DRAM: memory prices have quadrupled and iPhone margins are feeling it
The backdrop is the memory shortage that has already forced Apple to raise prices across MacBooks, iPads and other lines. Research firm TechInsights pegs the price rise at roughly 4x over the past year, with more to come, because AI data centre buyers are hoovering up supply at rates Apple can’t match. That has flipped a two-decade dynamic in which Apple squeezed its suppliers.Apple’s argument to Washington is that Chinese chips ease the crunch and keep US consumer prices down. It also claims Micron is gouging, pointing to gross margins now above 80%, and says the capacity Micron is adding will go mostly to AI customers anyway. Micron counters that it can spend its way out faster at home.
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Both sides have been busy building goodwill. Micron says it will invest $250 billion in US manufacturing, and recently pledged $250 million to match federal funding for Trump savings accounts covering newborns of employees and children in states where it operates. Both companies also chipped in for the new White House ballroom. Cook, for his part, handed Trump a gold-based plaque last year during his tariff exemption campaign.The personal history isn’t helping. The WSJ reports Mehrotra’s dislike of Apple dates to his SanDisk days, when he avoided meeting the company altogether.There’s also precedent. Apple did the engineering work with YMTC back in 2022, only for the deal to collapse after political blowback — then-senator Marco Rubio said Apple was playing with fire. YMTC remains on the entity list, and the Pentagon has designated both firms Chinese military companies.A White House spokesman said the administration would pursue economic relief while “safeguarding our national security.” Which is precisely the circle Trump now has to square.
