Intel in the US is expected to make at least some of the next Mac and iPhone chips for Apple. That recent event may have been the key to a important tariff exemption on semiconductors that Apple received almost a year ago.
Robbie Whelan, reporting for The Wall Street Journal on Friday (Apple news link):
Tim Cook came under pressure from the White House last summer when he submitted an unusual request.
Apple’s boss was in Washington, struggling to persuade the Trump administration to abandon its plan to impose 100% tariffs on all semiconductor imports, a move that would likely increase the cost of its most important products.
Apple finally got a waiver after pledging to invest hundreds of billions of dollars more in the United States. In the course of their meetings with Cook, President Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick also mentioned another American company: the troubled chipmaker Intel.
The report goes on to detail how the Trump administration essentially offered an investment in Intel as a key to tariff exemptions.
Nearly a year later, Trump announced via a Truth Social post that Apple would begin using chips made by Intel for some of its products, sending Intel’s stock to all-time highs. “I decided to help Intel because we need to design and build our chips here in the United States,” Trump wrote.
Apple plans to have Intel make chips for both Mac and iPhone laptops, according to a person familiar with the negotiations. The connection between the tariff talks and a potential deal between Apple and Intel has not been previously reported.
Ultimately, Apple was never forced to raise product prices due to semiconductor import tariffs. Unfortunately, the the bill was still due anyway due to global memory supply shortage.
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