Apple lobbies Trump for blacklisted Chinese memory chips

Apple's chief executive has taken an awkward ask directly to Trump's cabinet. According to reporting from The Wall Street Journal and corroborated by other outlets, Tim Cook has pitched Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio on letting Apple source memory from two Chinese firms, ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) and Yangtze Memory Technologies (YMTC), that sit on the Pentagon's 1260H list of companies with alleged ties to China's military.

The pitch has a specific shape. Apple has reportedly proposed using the Chinese chips only in devices meant for the Chinese market, freeing up chips from Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix for products sold elsewhere. That framing matters, because putting 1260H-listed Chinese memory into a US iPhone would be politically radioactive, whereas a 'China for China' carveout can be pitched as pragmatic supply chain diversification.

Apple is asking because the memory market has broken. Prices have reportedly quadrupled over recent quarters as Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron reallocate capacity toward high-bandwidth memory for AI datacenters. Apple raised Mac, iPad, and other product prices by $100 to $500 in late June, and a company spokesperson said Apple had 'never seen a component price increase this much, this quickly.' Sourcing from CXMT and YMTC is one of the few near-term ways to open that supply back up.

The pushback is coming from two directions at once. Rep. John Moolenaar, who chairs the House Select Committee on China, argued that buying from these firms would create 'an unacceptable risk for U.S. national security, economic security and supply chain security,' and lawmakers have separately warned that greater reliance on Chinese suppliers would weaken US chipmakers including Micron and discourage investment in new Western manufacturing capacity built up under the CHIPS Act.

The honest caveat is that this reporting rests on anonymous sources, no deal has been signed, and the search results do not give a precise volume, price, or timeline for what Apple actually wants. The part worth watching is whether the 1260H designation turns out to be politically negotiable when a large enough American buyer leans on the White House. If it is, that quietly changes the meaning of the whole list, and every other US company doing business in China will notice.