The Trump Administration has urged Apple not to purchase memory chips from China's CXMT despite a supply crunch driven by AI, the Wall Street Journal reported.
US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the administration is “not in favor of that,” according to the newspaper.
There have to be other solutions to the current memory issue, but it is not “great American companies using Chinese memory,” Lutnick was quoted as saying.
The administration’s message has been relayed to Apple, the report said.
The WSJ earlier reported the iPhone maker has been testing chips from CXMT, China’s largest company by market cap, for products including iPhones and MacBooks to be sold in China.
HP and Acer have started shipping laptops with CXMT’s memory chips to non-US customers, the newspaper said.
Apple, in theory, is free to buy memory chips from CXMT and Yangtze Memory Technologies, both on a Pentagon blacklist, so long as the chips are not customized for Apple, the WSJ said.
US memory chip giant Micron Technology has asked the administration not to allow Apple to use Chinese chips, a move it claimed would harm domestic production and is against the administration’s goal to bring back manufacturing to the country.
Apple’s chief operating officer Sabih Khan earlier declined to confirm the report to the journal, but said the company will “look at all options.”
