Apple faced pressure from the White House to use Intel's chipmaking plants while it was negotiating relief from semiconductor tariffs last summer, reports The Wall Street Journal ($).


In August 2025, Apple CEO Tim Cook was in Washington to lobby the Trump administration to drop its proposed 100 percent tariff on semiconductor imports – a levy that would have raised costs across Apple's product line. Apple reportedly secured an exemption after pledging to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in the U.S.