Bessent Blames Lutnick's Commerce Department for Failing to Blacklist Megaspeed

Speaking on CNBC's Squawk Box, Bessent said several agencies "were in favour of putting Megaspeed on the entity list for months". He added: "But Commerce has the pen... and you will have to ask them about their internal process."

It is the first time a senior cabinet member has publicly put responsibility on Lutnick's department. It adds to pressure on the commerce secretary from both parties a week after Huang resigned. Lutnick is due to testify before the Senate Banking Committee in December, and White House officials have discussed whether to push him out, though the White House says President Trump still has confidence in him.

Huang left Nvidia after it emerged that he had a relationship with a former Megaspeed executive who is suspected of being a Chinese spy. US agencies had looked at whether the cloud computing company was smuggling advanced Nvidia chips into China, but it was never added to the entity list, the Commerce Department's register of companies that US firms may not supply without a licence. The New York Times has reported that Commerce was investigating Megaspeed last year. The Financial Times has reported that the department was holding back efforts to list it.

Bessent said he was "frustrated" by the delay and by reports that AI chips had leaked into China. "President Trump made it very clear that China should not receive any Nvidia chips above H100s, so any leakage is very frustrating because it hurts our great companies in the AI race, because it gives the Chinese an advantage," he said.

He also aimed criticism at Nvidia. "The story has been thus far of 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?" He said it was "important that anyone at the company there be held accountable for that."

Those remarks shift attention from Huang's conduct to the questions now facing Nvidia's compliance systems and its interim leadership under Colette Kress. Investigators are already following the route of restricted chips through Singapore, Malaysia and China. Earlier reporting found that Nvidia stopped breaking out Singapore in its revenue disclosures after it blocked sales to Megaspeed in June 2025, and that loan filings put banned H100, H200 and H800 servers in a Shanghai data centre.

Congressional scrutiny continues to widen. Senate Banking chairman Tim Scott has asked Huang to appear on December 3 and Lutnick on December 10. Ron Wyden and Richard Neal, the senior Democrats on the Senate Finance and House Ways and Means committees, have asked Commerce to keep all records of its decisions to let Nvidia sell advanced chips to Chinese buyers. They are also challenging the 25% tariff charged on H200 chips that pass through the United States for inspection on their way to China, arguing that the administration's use of the trade statute undermined national security.

In the same interview Bessent turned to monetary policy and said the Federal Reserve should not raise interest rates in response to what he called an energy supply crisis tied to the war with Iran. Raising rates sharply in those conditions would rest on "very misleading numbers", he said, adding that the Fed should look ahead rather than in "the rear-view mirror". The Fed held rates last month, and chair Kevin Warsh has said policymakers will watch the data before deciding whether more tightening is needed.

The Commerce Department had not responded publicly to Bessent's comments by Friday afternoon. Megaspeed has been asked for comment. Lutnick's December 10 appearance before Senate Banking will be his first public chance to explain why the company was never listed.