Apple takes its fight with Micron to Trump: Why siding with Apple may help US iPhone buyers
Apple is lobbying the Trump administration to allow the use of Chinese-made memory chips in products sold outside the U.S. to reduce costs, while Micron argues this would undermine American manufacturing and national security.
Why it matters
This conflict highlights the ongoing struggle between corporate cost-cutting strategies and U.S. government efforts to decouple supply chains from Chinese technology.
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.
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