Apple asks Trump to approve Chinese CXMT and YMTC memory chips
Via WSJ, Tim Cook has asked the US administration to let Apple use Chinese memory chips from CXMT and YMTC in products sold outside the United States. Micron warns the move could destroy America’s last major memory-chip producer.
Key takeaway
Consumer-device margin pressure is colliding with US memory industrial policy: Apple’s non-US sourcing ask would expand Chinese NAND and DRAM into global Apple hardware while Micron frames it as a threat to the last major US memory champion.
Context
Reporting attributed to the Wall Street Journal says Apple wants presidential approval to use chips from China’s CXMT and YMTC in devices sold outside the US. The request is framed as a cost and supply play for memory used in Apple products abroad, not a blanket US-market clearance.
Micron’s warning that such approvals could destroy America’s last major memory-chip producer turns a private sourcing dispute into a national industrial-policy flashpoint. For AI and device supply chains, memory geopolitics now sit beside GPU export controls as a first-order constraint.