The aftermath of Jensen Huang’s fall has escalated into a public brawl between two of President Trump’s top advisers. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent accused Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick of failing to stop China from obtaining Nvidia’s most advanced chips. Nick Schifrin discusses the accusations and ongoing efforts to control advanced technology exports to China.
Amna Nawaz:
Now, the fallout from Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s downfall has escalated into a public brawl between two of President Trump’s top advisors.
The Treasury Secretary accused the Commerce Secretary of failing to stop China from obtaining Nvidia’s most advanced chips. Former Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang played an outsized role in President Trump’s tech policy.
Nick Schifrin discusses the current accusations and ongoing efforts to control advanced technology exports to China.
Jensen Huang:
Here it is, our all-new GeForce RTX 50 Series Blackwell architecture.
Nick Schifrin:
It’s American chips that are powering the AI revolution. And for years, Jensen Huang wanted to sell them in China.
Women:
Jensen, what do you think of China?
Jensen Huang:
I love China.
Nick Schifrin:
And Huang had an administrative ally.
Jensen Huang:
Howard is the person I’ve talked to the most in the administration.
Nick Schifrin:
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, whose agency controls the entity list of countries and companies banned from buying American technology.
Howard Lutnick:
We want the Chinese to continue using the American technology stack.
Nick Schifrin:
Last year, Commerce and the Trump administration decided to let China buy less advanced Nvidia chips. But international companies suspected of collaborating with Beijing, including the Singapore-based company Megaspeed, with which leader Huang had an affair, are said to have given China access to the most advanced chips.
And today, Lutnick was accused of looking the other way.
Scott Bessent:
Treasury, War, USTR and State have been supportive of Megaspeed’s listing on the Entity List for months. But Commerce has the pen.
Nick Schifrin:
Today on CNBC, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent criticized the Commerce Department for failing to implement U.S. export blocks on Nvidia’s most advanced chips.
Scott Bessent:
I’m frustrated when President Trump made it clear that China should not receive Nvidia chips better than the H100s. And so any leak is very frustrating because it hurts — our — our big companies in the AI race, and gives an advantage to the Chinese.
Chris McGuire, Council on Foreign Relations: If we stopped them from getting these chips, they would actually be, instead of months behind us in AI, they would be years behind us in AI.
Nick Schifrin:
Chris McGuire is a senior fellow on the Council on Foreign Relations and director of technology on President Biden’s National Security Council staff. He says efforts to restrict China’s access to chips began when the first Trump administration blocked Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei from purchasing semiconductors with American technology.
The United States realized that export restrictions were one of the best ways to curb Chinese military and AI progress, which is why they continued in the Biden administration. And, in early 2025, the Biden team pushed through new regulations requiring most foreign companies to get permission from the Commerce Department to buy advanced chips.
Chris McGuire:
It was supposed to come into effect in May 2025, but two days before it took effect, the Commerce Ministry said it would not enforce it.
If the Commerce Department had imposed this measure, Megaspeed would not have been able to obtain chips without the green light from the US government. But since they didn’t enforce it, Megaspeed could just buy whatever they wanted, without any interruption.
Nick Schifrin:
Today, Bessent also criticized Nvidia for selling to Megaspeed.
Scott Bessent:
Did Nvidia know its customer? And did Nvidia go to great lengths to make sure there wasn’t a leak and they were selling to obviously shell companies?
Nick Schifrin:
But it was Huang, who is a celebrity in China, who helped push President Trump to authorize the sale of American chips to China.
Jensen Huang:
Why don’t we come up with more balanced regulation so Nvidia can win worldwide, instead of abandoning the world? We want the United States to win at every level, including chips. And conceding the entire market will not allow the United States to win the technological race in the long term.
Chris McGuire:
Well, Jensen will definitely win if he sells chips to China, but I would say America doesn’t win.
Nick Schifrin:
In fact, independent researchers discovered this week that China’s AI models were all developed using smuggled advanced Nvidia chips.
Chris McGuire:
While I think poor implementation of export controls has probably cost us years of advantage, doubling down now will still give us years, or potentially decades, of advantage in the future, provided we manage it correctly. But if we don’t, China will stay close and that will have catastrophic consequences for U.S. national security.
Nick Schifrin:
There is a debate on this subject, which will continue. But Jensen Huang’s departure will strengthen advocates for tougher export controls, including a push on Capitol Hill to further block the world’s cutting-edge technology from the United States’ main international competitor.
For the PBS News Hour, I’m Nick Schifrin.
Gn bussni
