US senators want Apple's Chinese chip plan dead, in every country it sells in

A bipartisan group of US senators has written to Apple CEO Tim Cook asking the company to walk away from Chinese memory chips altogether—not just in devices sold in America, but in every Apple product sold anywhere in the world. The letter, led by New York Democrat Chuck Schumer and Indiana Republican Jim Banks, names two suppliers: ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) and Yangtze Memory Technologies (YMTC). Both sit on the Pentagon's 1260H list of Chinese military companies. Both were reinstated on that list last month after briefly vanishing from it in February, a disappearance that reportedly annoyed the White House enough to get them put back.The senators want Cook to commit, in writing, that neither supplier's memory will end up inside an Apple device. They have given him until August 21 to respond, along with seven questions that go well past a simple yes or no—including what Apple has shown CXMT about its product roadmaps during qualification, and what physical access Chinese engineers would get to Apple's design and supplier-management facilities. Joining Schumer and Banks are Mike Crapo, James Risch, Pete Ricketts, Andy Kim and Jeanne Shaheen.Apple's memory chip shortage explained: why MacBook and iPad prices went up 20%Because RAM has become the most expensive thing in a laptop. AI data centres have swallowed the world's memory supply, DRAM contract prices have roughly quadrupled in a year, and Micron's gross margin has climbed past 80%—a number Apple has been pointing at loudly in Washington. In June, Apple raised MacBook and iPad prices by around 20%. The market took $263 billion off its valuation in a day.Cook addressed it directly in company’s Q3 2026 earnings call, his last as CEO before John Ternus takes over on September 1. Apple raised prices reluctantly, he said, because the industry is in a hundred-year flood on memory pricing. He also noted that three companies—Micron, SK Hynix and Samsung—effectively own DRAM, said more suppliers would help on both supply and price, and added that Apple is evaluating all options. Read alongside the senators' letter, that last line is doing a lot of work.Apple vs YMTC in 2022: the failed Chinese memory chip deal that shaped this letterApple has been here before. Four years ago it had already done the engineering work to qualify YMTC NAND for iPhones sold in China. Word got out, Congress objected, Marco Rubio—then a senator, now Secretary of State—said Apple was playing with fire, and the Biden administration put YMTC on the Commerce Department's Entity List. The deal died.The senators lean on that history hard. Their argument is that the China-only limit will not survive contact with procurement reality: once a part passes Apple's qualification process, shipping it worldwide is one decision away. Apple's own ask appears to have widened along exactly those lines—what began as a China-only request has reportedly grown to cover products sold everywhere. The senators also push back on the cost logic, citing analysis that CXMT's prices are in some cases higher than its global rivals, and that it has already raised prices on existing customers. CXMT only turned profitable after the shortage began, having burned state capital through years of losses. It listed in Shanghai this week seeking $9.8 billion.Micron's $250 billion US expansion and SK Hynix's Indiana plant are what's at stakeFollow the states. Schumer is from New York, Banks and Crapo and Risch from Indiana and Idaho—precisely where Micron and SK Hynix are spending the money. Micron has committed $250 billion across New York, Idaho and Virginia, targeting 90,000 jobs and 40% of its DRAM output made in America. SK Hynix is putting roughly $4 billion into an advanced packaging plant next to Purdue University in West Lafayette. Cheap subsidised Chinese memory landing in the middle of that build-out is the outcome these senators are trying to prevent.Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra has been lobbying Lutnick and other officials directly, warning that Chinese memory could hollow out US chipmaking the way subsidised Chinese steel did. The friction is personal too—WSJ reports bad blood dating to Mehrotra's SanDisk years, when he largely avoided meeting Apple.There is also a legal deadline nobody can negotiate around. Section 5949 of the FY2023 NDAA—a Schumer provision—bars federal agencies from buying products containing CXMT or YMTC chips starting December 2027. Apple would be qualifying a supply chain the US government is already required to phase out.Apple has not commented on the letter. Trump meets Xi Jinping in the US in September, with export controls on the agenda.Get the latest technology news and updates. Download the TOI App.