WASHINGTON — Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent publicly criticised the Commerce Department on Friday for delaying export restrictions on Megaspeed International, the Singapore-based company at the centre of the Nvidia chip scandal, in an unusually open split inside President Donald Trump’s cabinet.
Bessent told CNBC that the Treasury Department, the State Department, the Defense Department and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative had all favoured adding Megaspeed to the Commerce Department’s Entity List for months. The list is the government’s trade blacklist for foreign companies judged to pose a national security risk, and Commerce controls it.
“Commerce has the pen, and you will have to ask them about their internal processes,” Bessent said. “My deputy has been pushing this for months.” He declined to discuss reports that he had confronted Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick about the delay in the White House Situation Room last week.
Megaspeed has been accused of diverting advanced Nvidia semiconductors to China through intermediary companies. Reports put its purchases of Nvidia’s most advanced chips at more than $4 billion since 2024. The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security began investigating Megaspeed in 2024 and later handed the inquiry to the Justice Department, whose national security division is examining whether export control laws were broken, according to the Associated Press.
Singapore authorities have also been investigating Megaspeed and several individuals since February 2025 over suspected false declarations involving server purchases. Megaspeed has denied wrongdoing and said on Thursday that it takes its obligations under U.S. export control laws “extremely seriously.” No court has found that the company broke the law.
The dispute lands in the middle of the collapse of Nvidia’s leadership. Jensen Huang resigned as Nvidia’s chief executive this week after reporting linked him to Megaspeed executive Alice Huang, whom U.S. authorities suspect of working for Chinese intelligence. China has denied spying allegations, and Singapore’s government has said Alice Huang was not investigated for espionage there.
Bessent said Trump had made clear that China should not receive Nvidia chips at the H100 level or above, and he questioned how well Nvidia had vetted its own customer. “I think there are a lot of holes in the system, and we are constantly working to plug them,” he said.
Lawmakers from both parties joined the criticism on Friday. Republican Senator John Curtis said Lutnick’s reported stalling “raises the question of whether the Commerce Department is acting in the best interests of the American people.” Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal went further, saying, “Lutnick must go.” The Commerce Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment, according to the Associated Press.
According to Axios, Trump approved action against companies suspected of diverting Nvidia chips to China at least three times this year, in May, August and earlier this month, but the listings were delayed, and no new companies have been added to the Entity List since October 2025. What happens next rests with Commerce: adding Megaspeed to the list would sharply restrict its ability to buy advanced U.S. chips, and would be the clearest sign yet that the administration intends to close the route that the scandal exposed.
