Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent at a White House press briefing in Washington on 28 May 2026 Credit: Official White House Photo by Abe McNatt Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has blamed Howard Lutnick’s Commerce Department for leaving Megaspeed off the US trade blacklist. Other departments wanted the Singapore-based company listed for months, he said on Friday. Megaspeed is at the centre of the scandal that ended Jensen Huang’s run as Nvidia’s chief executive. Bessent told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that Treasury, the Pentagon, the State Department and the US Trade Representative backed the move. “They 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.” The entity list is the Commerce Department’s trade blacklist.
It cuts companies off from US technology. Megaspeed is not on it. “Any leakage is very frustrating” Bessent said he was frustrated by the delays. He pointed to President Donald Trump’s limit on the chips China may receive. “I am frustrated when President Trump made it very clear that China should not receive any Nvidia chips above H100s. And so any leakage is very frustrating,” Bessent said.
It “hurts our great companies in the AI race,” he added. He also turned to Nvidia itself. CNBC asked if Nvidia’s top chips had reached China through Megaspeed. Bessent said there was “a lot of leakage in the system”. “The story has been thus far on Jensen Huang’s personal foibles,” Bessent said. “The real story here should be: Did Nvidia know their client, and was there a robust effort at Nvidia to make sure that there was no leakage and that they were selling to what were obviously pass-through shell companies?” Huang resigned as Nvidia’s CEO on Thursday, after admitting an affair with Alice Huang, a Megaspeed executive whom US officials suspect of being a Chinese intelligence asset.
The Situation Room On Wednesday, Axios reported that Bessent had confronted Lutnick in the White House Situation Room. Bessent asked why Megaspeed was not on the entity list, Axios reported. Lutnick replied that he would “look into it”. Commerce denied it. “This is false.
Secretary Bessent and Secretary Lutnick had no such conversation,” spokeswoman Kristen Eichamer told Axios. Asked about the meeting on Friday, Bessent did not confirm or deny it. “We don’t repeat conversations in the Situation Room,” he said. Commerce did not immediately respond to CNBC about Bessent’s remarks. A Commerce spokesperson told Semafor that “Treasury and Commerce have a great working relationship”.
Lutnick’s position The New York Times reported this week that Commerce halted its Megaspeed probe in 2025 after Nvidia’s lawyer stepped in. Lutnick has since been asked to testify before the Senate Banking Committee in December. Some Republicans have defended him. “We don’t need to shoot Howard today,” Senator Jim Justice told Semafor. A White House official told Semafor that Trump “maintains complete confidence in the secretary”.
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