Apple Seeks White House Waiver to Buy Chips From Blacklisted Chinese Firm
Apple is lobbying the Trump administration to approve purchases from CXMT, a Pentagon-blacklisted Chinese chipmaker, as memory prices climb.
Apple is quietly pressing the Trump administration for permission to source memory chips from ChangXin Memory Technologies, a Chinese semiconductor company that sits on a Pentagon blacklist, according to a Financial Times report published Friday. The move underscores how sharply rising memory chip prices are squeezing one of the world's most profitable technology companies — enough to prompt it to seek a politically sensitive carve-out from national security restrictions.
The lobbying effort places Apple in an uncomfortable position: the company would need explicit White House clearance to do business with a firm the Defense Department has flagged as a concern, a designation typically intended to limit American companies' exposure to Chinese military-affiliated technology suppliers. That Apple is willing to navigate this friction at all signals how acute the cost pressure from memory markets has become.
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The episode also illuminates a broader tension in US-China technology policy. Washington has spent years building an elaborate architecture of export controls, entity lists, and blacklists designed to slow China's semiconductor ambitions — yet American corporations dependent on competitive chip pricing routinely find themselves pulling in the opposite direction. Apple's reported appeal is less an isolated incident than a symptom of that structural conflict.
Neither Apple, the White House, nor CXMT responded to Reuters requests for comment made outside business hours, leaving the scope and current status of the waiver request unclear. Whether the administration grants any such exemption could set a significant precedent for how other US firms engage with blacklisted Chinese suppliers under continued supply-chain and cost pressures.
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