Trump says Apple to partner with Intel on US chip design, production - The Straits Times

U.S. President Donald Trump announced on Truth Social that Apple has agreed to partner with Intel for chip design and manufacturing in the United States. This move aims to diversify Apple's supply cha... Read original →

Trump’s claim that Apple will partner with Intel for U.S.-based chip design and manufacturing reflects Washington’s push for technological sovereignty, not genuine supply chain optimization. Apple will likely compromise on sub-3nm performance—Intel’s 18A node lags TSMC’s N2 in yield and scale, risking A-series chip efficiency. For TSMC, this isn’t lost business but politically mandated redundancy, reinforcing the irreplaceability of its advanced fabs in Taiwan, China. NVIDIA and AMD will accelerate collaborations with Samsung and GlobalFoundries on mature AI nodes to hedge geopolitical exposure. Over the next 18 months, U.S. subsidies will mask uneconomic domestic production costs, but without volume, Intel’s foundry model remains fragile post-subsidy. The real long-tail impact: the AI chip ecosystem fractures into a ‘U.S.-compliant’ and an ‘Asia-efficient’ track, forcing dual-design strategies and inflating R&D overhead across the board.