A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers has urged the Trump administration to ban purchases of memory chips from China’s CXMT and YMTC, arguing that dependence on Chinese semiconductor suppliers poses “an unacceptable risk to America’s national security, economic security and supply chain security.”
Representative John Moolenaar, chairman of the House Select Committee on China, and Democratic Representative George Whitesides sent a letter to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on July 16 calling for tighter restrictions on the two Chinese memory manufacturers. The letter follows reports that Apple had been lobbying the administration for approval to use CXMT’s DRAM products as global memory prices rise amid AI-driven supply constraints.
“China’s major memory semiconductor manufacturers are all closely tied to the Chinese military,” Moolenaar said. Purchases by U.S. companies, he added, would directly support the People’s Liberation Army’s development of dual-use technologies.
CXMT (ChangXin Memory Technologies) has grown rapidly, capturing roughly 9 percent of the global DRAM market. The company has raised approximately $10.1 billion in funding and is reportedly pursuing a listing on Shanghai’s Star Market, with ambitions to enter the high-bandwidth memory (HBM) segment that currently serves AI accelerator clusters.
The Pentagon added CXMT to its list of Chinese military companies earlier this year, but placement on that list does not automatically prohibit U.S. businesses from working with the firm. The lawmakers are pushing for separate rules that would bar U.S. companies from buying semiconductors from any firm on the Defense Department’s Chinese military companies list or the Commerce Department’s export control list. They also urged the administration to tighten existing sanctions on YMTC, which is already subject to export restrictions.
The broader context is a tightening semiconductor supply chain. South Korea’s Samsung and SK Hynix, along with U.S.-based Micron, have prioritized high-margin HBM and server DRAM for AI infrastructure, leaving consumer markets undersupplied and creating openings for Chinese alternatives. The lawmakers’ letter explicitly calls for coordinated action with South Korea, Japan, and the European Union to prevent Chinese memory from entering allied supply chains through indirect routes.
Sources: Lawmakers want U.S. government to ban memory chips from China (Tom’s Hardware, Jul 17); U.S. Lawmakers Urge Ban on Purchases of China’s CXMT, YMTC Memory Chips (Korea Economic Daily/BloomingBit, Jul 17); Apple burns political capital in Washington (WCCFTech, Jul 16)