WASHINGTON — Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent blamed the Commerce Department — and by extension, his cabinet colleague Howard Lutnick — for the Trump administration not acting sooner against a Nvidia customer accused of illegally diverting sensitive AI chips to China.
Bessent told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Friday morning that four executive departments favored putting Singapore-based Megaspeed on a list of companies that posed national security concerns, but faced inaction by Lutnick’s agency.
“Treasury, War, USTR, and State were in favor of putting Megaspeed on the entity list for months, but Commerce has the pen,” Bessent said. “You will have to ask them about their internal processes.”
Megaspeed executive Alice Huang, a suspected Chinese spy, was recently revealed to have engaged in an extramarital affair with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (no relation), who stepped down Thursday morning after 33 years at the tech giant.
“Did Nvidia know their client?” the Treasury secretary asked rhetorically. “Was there a robust effort at Nvidia to make sure that there was no leakage and that they weren’t selling to what were obviously pass-through shell companies [for China]? I think it’s important that anyone at the company there be held accountable for that.”
According to multiple reports, Bessent confronted Lutnick last week over the Commerce Department’s inaction on Megaspeed, with the Commerce secretary only responding that he would “look into it.”
“We don’t repeat conversations in the Situation Room,” Bessent told CNBC pointedly when asked about the dispute.
The White House and President Trump are standing by the commerce secretary, who Jensen Huang described last year as his closest friend in the administration.
“Secretary Lutnick is a champion of President Trump’s America First trade and tariff policies, which have secured almost 20 fair trade deals and trillions in manufacturing investments,” a White House official told The Post Friday.
“President Trump maintains complete confidence in the secretary and his ability to carry out the position as the most transformative Commerce secretary in modern history.”
