Two U.S. lawmakers want the Commerce Department to cut Chinese memory chips out of American tech supply chains, including cases where U.S. companies might route those parts into products sold outside the country.
Rep. John Moolenaar, the Republican chair of the U.S. House China Committee, and Democratic Rep. George Whitesides sent Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick a letter asking the department to bar U.S. companies from buying semiconductors from companies listed either on the Pentagon’s Chinese Military Companies blacklist or the Commerce Department’s Entity List, according to the Financial Times and the lawmakers’ letter.
The request is aimed at China-based memory makers ChangXin Memory Technologies, known as CXMT, and Yangtze Memory Technologies Co., known as YMTC. CXMT makes DRAM. YMTC makes 3D NAND flash. Those are not glamorous components, but they are everywhere: phones, PCs, servers, SSDs and the AI data center buildout currently eating memory supply like a wood chipper.
Moolenaar and Whitesides also asked the Trump administration to add CXMT to the Entity List and impose more restrictions on YMTC, according to the letter. YMTC is already on the Commerce Department’s Entity List, while CXMT is already on the Pentagon’s Chinese Military Companies list.
The distinction matters. Being on those lists creates legal and political hazards, but the current setup does not by itself amount to a blanket ban on Apple or another U.S. company buying finished memory chips from those suppliers, according to the report.
Apple has sought approval from the Trump administration to buy memory from CXMT during a severe global DRAM shortage tied to rapid AI infrastructure growth, Tom’s Hardware reported. Corsair, Patriot Memory and some other branded memory module and SSD suppliers have already used CXMT DRAM and YMTC 3D NAND, according to the same report.
What the lawmakers want changed
Moolenaar and Whitesides framed the issue as a supply-chain security problem, not a narrow trade dispute. In their letter, they wrote that reliance on Chinese memory manufacturers creates an “unacceptable risk” to U.S. national security, economic security and supply chain security.
The lawmakers said they were alarmed that Apple and other U.S. technology companies wanted to buy memory from Chinese semiconductor firms, including companies they described as having military ties. They argued that purchases from Chinese memory makers could help fund technologies with military uses in China.
The letter goes further than a domestic purchasing restriction. Moolenaar and Whitesides urged the U.S. government to work with Japan, South Korea and the European Union to keep CXMT and YMTC from using the current shortage to win slots in allied supply chains.
That is the practical loophole they are trying to close. A U.S. company could theoretically buy Chinese memory for devices sold in China or other foreign markets, while continuing to use non-Chinese suppliers for products sold in the United States. The lawmakers want allied governments to stop that split-supply arrangement before it becomes normal purchasing practice.
Moolenaar and Whitesides also argued that China could repeat patterns they associate with solar, steel, telecom and electric vehicles: state-backed companies cut prices, foreign competitors lose investment capacity, and buyers later discover they have fewer non-Chinese suppliers left.
That claim is a policy argument, not a market certainty. The confirmed fact is narrower: two members of Congress are pressing Commerce to make Chinese memory harder for U.S. firms to buy, while a memory shortage gives companies an obvious reason to look for any supplier still answering the phone.
This story draws on original reporting from Tom's Hardware.
