Apple has spent recent weeks making its case directly to the White House. According to The Wall Street Journal, Tim Cook and other senior Apple executives have pitched President Donald Trump, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on a plan to buy memory chips from two Chinese suppliers, ChangXin Memory Technologies and Yangtze Memory Technologies, for Apple products sold outside the United States. Micron, the only American memory maker of any real size, is lobbying just as hard to stop it.The stakes are not abstract. Memory prices have roughly quadrupled over the past year, according to research firm TechInsights, and Apple has already pushed up prices across MacBooks, iPads and other lines. Apple’s argument to Washington is simple: more supply means cheaper components, and cheaper components eventually mean cheaper devices for American buyers. Micron’s argument is equally simple, and it has nothing to do with your next iPhone bill.
Why Apple wants CXMT and YMTC memory chips cleared for its supply chain
Apple is not asking to put Chinese DRAM inside US-bound iPhones. The request covers products sold in other markets, which would free up existing supply elsewhere in its chain. The company has also gone on the offensive against its own supplier, telling officials that Micron’s gross margins—now past 80 per cent—look less like a shortage and more like gouging, per the Journal. Apple further claims Micron is slow to add capacity, and that whatever it does add will be steered toward data centre customers paying AI-era prices.There is history here. Apple did the engineering groundwork with YMTC back in 2022 before political blowback killed the arrangement and the company landed on the Commerce Department’s entity list. Both CXMT and YMTC have been designated Chinese military companies by the Pentagon.
Micron’s counter: cheap Chinese DRAM could hollow out American chip manufacturing
Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra has told Lutnick and others that letting Chinese suppliers sell to US tech firms — no matter where the finished product ships—could do to memory what Chinese exports did to American steel. Micron says it can fix the shortage itself, faster, and points to a planned $250 billion US investment.The bad blood is personal, too. The Journal reports Mehrotra’s frustration with Apple’s price-squeezing dates to his SanDisk years, when he largely avoided meeting the company.Trump now has to pick between two things he has promised: lower consumer prices and more chips made in America. White House spokesman Kush Desai would only say the administration wants “investments and economic relief for the American people while safeguarding our national security.”
