Apple wants a government waiver to buy chips from a US-blacklisted Chinese company linked to the Chinese military.
According to the Financial Times, Apple is seeking clearance from the Trump administration to purchase chips from a firm that sits on the US entity list due to its alleged connections to China's military. The request puts Apple in the unusual position of lobbying the administration for an exemption to a national security restriction — the kind of carve-out that has become a recurring feature of US-China tech trade tensions. No approval has been reported yet.
The ask matters because it signals how constrained Apple's chip supply options have become. If a company with Apple's political capital and domestic manufacturing commitments needs to petition Washington for permission to buy from a blacklisted supplier, it illustrates just how tangled the global semiconductor supply chain remains — even after years of reshoring rhetoric. It also puts the Trump administration in a delicate spot: grant the waiver and look soft on military-linked Chinese firms, or refuse and hand Apple a production headache.
Apple has repeatedly pledged billions toward US manufacturing, but chip sourcing decisions reveal that supply chain independence is still more aspiration than reality.