Bessent Faults Lutnick For Not Cracking Down On Firm At Center Of Nvidia Scandal

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Friday that the Commerce Department led by Howard Lutnick had resisted for months efforts by other Cabinet agencies to crack down on the Singapore company that’s at the center of the alleged Chinese espionage scandal that ousted Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.

“Treasury, War, USTR and State were in favor of putting Megaspeed on the entity list for months,” Bessent said in a CNBC interview, referring to the company that the U.S. had reportedly been examining over whether it helped send Nvidia’s most advanced chips to China.

“But Commerce has the pen,” he said. “And you will have to ask them about their internal processes.”

The comments are the latest public flare-up of tensions within the Trump administration over how it oversaw Nvidia in the months leading up to public revelations that Huang had an affair with an executive from Megaspeed who reportedly was suspected of being a Chinese spy.

Lutnick’s oversight of export controls on Nvidia has faced bipartisan scrutiny in recent days amid the ongoing fallout from the scandal. Senate Banking Chair Tim Scott (R-S.C.) on Thursday summoned Lutnick and Huang to testify before his panel.

Bessent said he was dismayed by the apparent delays in tightening restrictions on exports of advanced chips.

He said his deputy “had been pushing this for months” with counterparts at other agencies. “We have all the authorities that we need,” he added. “They just need to be implemented.

“I am frustrated when President Trump made it very clear that China should not receive any Nvidia chips above H100s,” he said. “And so any leakage is very frustrating because it hurts our great companies and the AI race gives the Chinese an advantage.”

A Commerce spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Bessent also said that there needed to be accountability at Nvidia and an investigation over whether the company knowingly sold advanced chips that it knew might end up being used by China.

“The real story here should be: Did Nvidia know their client?” Bessent said, adding that if Nvidia was “selling to what were obviously pass-through shell companies” it is “important that anyone at the company there be held accountable for that.”

“I am sure that the board, now having woken up to what's going on, is going to do a thorough investigation,” he added.