Apple faced pressure from the White House to use Intel’s chip manufacturing plants as it negotiated relief from semiconductor tariffs last summer, reports The Wall Street Journal ($).
In August 2025, Apple CEO Tim Cook was in Washington to pressure the Trump administration to drop its proposed 100% tariff on semiconductor imports – a levy that would have increased costs across Apple’s entire product line. Apple reportedly got an exemption after pledging to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in the United States, even though many of those investments were already planned.
During these meetings, President Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick reportedly urged Cook to use Intel’s manufacturing plants to make some of Apple’s chips. The link between the tariff negotiations and the Apple-Intel deal had not been previously reported.
Nearly a year later, Trump announced through his Truth Social platform that Apple would begin using Intel-made chips in some products. “We need to design and build our chips right here in America,” the president said. The news sent Intel shares to record highs.
According to a person close to the negotiations cited by the WSJApple plans to ask Intel to make chips for Mac laptops and iPhones. The report does not specify which chips or in what volume, and Apple is expected to remain dependent on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, or TSMC, for the majority of its custom silicon.
Apple has never considered Intel as a supplier before, both because the chipmaker lags behind rivals like TSMC and Samsung and because of the checkered history between the two companies.
The report suggests the deal is part of a broader administrative effort to prop up Intel, especially since the U.S. government last year converted $9 billion in federal grants into a 10% equity stake, making it the chipmaker’s largest shareholder.
Nvidia and SpaceX have also signed deals with Intel since then, apparently under the same pressure from the Trump administration.
Intel’s foundry business posted operating losses of $10.4 billion in its last four fiscal quarters, and in recent years outside customers have doubted its ability to reliably produce usable silicon in large volumes. THE WSJ The report gives no timetable for when Intel-made chips might appear in Apple products, and Apple has not commented on this arrangement.
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