A bipartisan group of US senators has given Apple a hard deadline of August 21, 2026 to commit publicly to not sourcing memory chips from Chinese firms CXMT and YMTC, escalating a months-long confrontation over Apple’s attempts to secure supply from two companies the Pentagon has formally designated as Chinese military entities.
Bloomberg first reported the senators’ letter, which is led by Indiana Republican Jim Banks and New York Democrat Chuck Schumer. The lawmakers called Apple’s plan “short-sighted,” warning that it would “ensure the world’s most valuable consumer-electronics company grows dependent on critical supplies from a firm the United States government has formally designated as a Chinese military company.”
Why Apple wants these chips in the first place
The push isn’t about cutting costs, standard DRAM contract prices surged an estimated 55% to 60% in early 2026 as AI server demand pulled memory capacity away from consumer devices, and Apple, according to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, believes the shortage will persist well through 2027. You can read more about Apple’s real memory crisis and how the company arrived at this position. Tim Cook and senior Apple executives have been directly lobbying Trump administration officials, including Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, to approve the use of CXMT and YMTC chips in Apple products sold outside the United States.
The senators’ letter also raises a separate concern: that the component qualification process Apple is running with these firms may already involve the transfer of controlled technical information, which could require a Commerce Department export license Apple has not obtained. The lawmakers are asking for specifics about what Apple has shared with CXMT during testing CXMT chips as part of that qualification.
This fight has a history, and Apple lost it before
Apple explored using YMTC flash storage in iPhones sold in China back in 2022, shelving the plan after bipartisan congressional pressure. One of the loudest voices opposing that deal was Marco Rubio, then the Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman, who accused Apple of “playing with fire.” Rubio is now Trump’s acting National Security Advisor, which makes any White House approval of the current plan a considerably steeper climb.
The Trump administration itself appears divided on the question, with some officials reportedly opposed to letting Apple proceed. That internal split has kept the issue alive without producing an answer Apple can act on.
Micron is lobbying hard on the other side
Apple isn’t the only company making its case in Washington. Micron, the only major US-based memory manufacturer, is actively lobbying the administration to block Apple’s plan. CEO Sanjay Mehrotra has warned officials that allowing Chinese memory firms to sell to American tech companies, even for products sold outside the US, risks doing to the domestic memory industry what Chinese competition did to US steel. The senators echoed that concern, noting that the precedent Apple sets could prompt other companies to follow, undermining planned domestic memory investments in Indiana, Idaho, and New York.
The August 21 deadline puts Cook’s team in a difficult spot: the supply problem that drove them toward Beijing hasn’t gone away, and neither has the bipartisan political resistance that blocked the same move four years ago.
The senators’ argument carries more structural weight this time. In 2022, the objection was primarily about national security optics. In 2026, with domestic memory investment plans in multiple states explicitly on the line, the political coalition against Apple’s plan is broader, and the administration has more domestic stakeholders to weigh against Apple’s supply-chain argument.
