Lutnick, a billionaire investor, is a close friend of Trump, who has made Huang one of his closest advisers on artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n
As head of the department that oversees US export controls, Lutnick is ultimately responsible for enforcing the rules meant to keep advanced Nvidia processors out of Chinese hands.<\/p>\n
Speaking on CNBC, Bessent said Treasury, the Defence Department, the US Trade Representative\u2019s office and the State Department had backed adding the Singapore company, Megaspeed, to Washington\u2019s trade blacklist \u201cfor months\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut Commerce has the pen,\u201d Bessent said. \u201cYou will have to ask them about their internal processes.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said he was \u201cfrustrated\u201d because Trump \u201cmade it very clear that China should not receive any Nvidia chips above H100s\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cAny leakage is very frustrating because it hurts our great companies, and in the AI race gives the Chinese an advantage,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Lutnick is also facing pressure from Congress. Senator Jim Banks, an Indiana Republican, told Fox News he wanted Lutnick to testify before the Senate Banking Committee \u201cASAP\u201d, citing \u201cbipartisan questions and concerns about what\u2019s happened over the last year\u201d.<\/p>\n
Lutnick has agreed to testify, Commerce Department spokeswoman Kristen Eichamer told US media.<\/p>\n
News outlet Axios had reported that Trump had approved action against suspected diversions of Nvidia chips to China on at least three occasions this year but that Lutnick did not act on the requests.<\/p>\n
Megaspeed is suspected of helping Chinese firms get around US export controls by buying Nvidia chips for its data centres in Southeast Asia and routing them to China.<\/p>\n
The company reportedly traded more than US$4 billion ($7.2b) worth of Nvidia chips over two years.<\/p>\n
\u2018Know your client\u2019<\/p>\n
This week, US media identified Megaspeed\u2019s former director, Alice Huang, as an alleged Chinese intelligence asset who had a relationship with Jensen Huang. The two are not related. Beijing has denied the spying allegations.<\/p>\n
Jensen Huang acknowledged an extramarital affair in a November 8 letter to Nvidia employees that did not name the woman involved.<\/p>\n
Nvidia\u2019s board has said it will investigate and three congressional committee chairs have asked Jensen Huang to attend a closed-door briefing in Washington on November 18.<\/p>\n
Bessent said coverage of the affair had focused too much on Jensen Huang\u2019s private life amid reports of other affairs with Nvidia colleagues.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe story thus far has been on Jensen Huang\u2019s personal foibles,\u201d he said. \u201cThe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
He questioned whether Nvidia had been selling to \u201cwhat were obviously pass-through shell companies\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s important that anyone at the company there be held accountable for that,\u201d Bessent said. His comments suggest that scrutiny could extend to what Nvidia executives knew about the company\u2019s customers.<\/p>\n
He said there was \u201ca lot of leakage in the system\u201d and that the administration was \u201cconstantly working to close that down\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u2013 AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lutnick, a billionaire investor, is a close friend of Trump, who has made Huang one of his closest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":660715,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[34242,8184,15382,29024,138,6727,607,1039,7520,1656,26034,2178,6130,42343,48338,71,323407,323238,111,139,1042,69,1523,18154,17216,2572,7241,9644,8139,3045,9739,35108,8841,25187,19096],"class_list":["post-660714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-bessent","tag-blacklist","tag-blamed","tag-blames","tag-business","tag-cabinet","tag-china","tag-chips","tag-commerce","tag-company","tag-department","tag-donald","tag-failing","tag-failure","tag-fallout","tag-from","tag-funnelling","tag-megaspeed","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nvidia","tag-nz","tag-over","tag-political","tag-powerful","tag-president","tag-publicly","tag-scandal","tag-scott","tag-secretary","tag-singapore","tag-spread","tag-suspected","tag-treasury","tag-trumps"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=660714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660714\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/660715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=660714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=660714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=660714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}