Apple Seeks Waiver to Buy Memory Chips From Blacklisted Chinese Firm
Apple is lobbying the Trump administration for permission to source memory chips from CXMT, a Chinese company on the Pentagon's blacklist.
Apple is pushing the Trump administration to grant it clearance to purchase memory chips from CXMT, a Chinese semiconductor manufacturer that appears on the Pentagon's blacklist of companies with alleged ties to China's military, according to a report from Yahoo. The move underscores how acute the global memory chip shortage has become for one of the world's most valuable technology companies.
The request puts Apple in a politically precarious position, navigating a trade and national-security environment in which Washington has spent years restricting American companies' access to Chinese chipmakers. The Pentagon's blacklist — formally known as the 1260H list — is designed to discourage U.S. firms from doing business with entities the Defense Department considers linked to China's military-industrial complex.
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Apple's lobbying effort signals that the company believes its supply constraints are severe enough to risk the political backlash of being seen seeking an exemption for a blacklisted Chinese supplier. The U.S. government, for its part, has signaled it is not receptive to the request, reflecting broader tensions between corporate supply-chain pragmatism and the administration's hardline posture on Chinese technology firms.
The episode highlights a deepening fault line for American tech giants that rely on global semiconductor supply chains even as Washington pushes to decouple from Chinese chipmakers. For Apple, the calculus involves weighing near-term production risks against long-term regulatory and reputational exposure at a moment when U.S.-China tech relations remain deeply strained.
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