Bessent Blames Lutnick’s Commerce Department for Delaying Nvidia Export Controls

By Mike Catalini and Christopher Rugaber

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Friday he was frustrated with the Commerce Department’s delay in implementing controls over the export of certain Nvidia chips to China.

Bessent said on CNBC that his department, along with the departments of State and Defense and the U.S. Trade Representative, were in favor of adding Megaspeed to an export control list for months but that the Commerce Department was in charge of the matter.

“I am frustrated when President Trump made it very clear China should not receive any Nvidia chips above H100s,” he said. Commerce “has the pen, and you will have to ask them about their internal processes.”

Bessent’s comments were an unusually public rebuke of the Commerce Department, which oversees U.S. government controls over exports of sensitive, high-tech goods. The comments come as Nvidia’s ties to Singapore-based Megaspeed International, which prominently touts the companies’ partnership on its website, play a prominent role in the resignation of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has come under increasing scrutiny because of his reportedly close relationship with Huang. The New York Times reported Thursday that Lutnick resisted placing greater limits on the sale of Nvidia’s more advanced chips to China. Chinese firms have accessed Nvidia’s chips through companies like Megaspeed.

The Commerce Department did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

Huang resigned Thursday after news that he had an affair with former Megaspeed executive Alice Huang, who U.S. intelligence suspects to be a Chinese spy, according to The Times.

Last year, Megaspeed was accused of illicitly shipping advanced Nvidia computer chips into China, but in December said there was “no evidence” of such exports. On Thursday, Megaspeed maintained it takes its obligation to comply with American export control laws “extremely seriously” — and that it was committed to working “constructively and transparently” with the U.S. government.