Bessent Faults Commerce Over Delayed Nvidia Chip Limits as Chip-Export Scrutiny Grows

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Friday he was frustrated with the Commerce Department's delay in restricting Nvidia chip exports to a company led by an alleged Chinese spy. The dispute puts Commerce under scrutiny over whether national security warnings were heeded before Chinese firms were cleared to handle the chips.

Bessent spoke on CNBC and named his own department along with the departments of State and Defense in his remarks. NPR reports that Commerce cleared Chinese companies to handle Nvidia chips despite national security concerns from cabinet officials and U.S. intelligence agencies. A commentary by Andrew McCarthy, a National Review Institute fellow, links the affair to Nvidia's departing chief, Jensen Huang, and to Huang's close relationship with President Trump. It asks whether Nvidia payments influenced Trump's policy on chip exports to China.

National Review, on the right, runs an opinion column that leads with corruption rather than process. McCarthy says the “Golden Age of Pay to Play” makes the corruption angle more consequential than Huang's alleged personal entanglements. He promises to walk through three transactions in order, and the opening centers on Trump and Huang rather than on Commerce. NPR, on the left, leads with institutional pressure on Commerce, stressing the delay and the objections from cabinet officials and intelligence agencies, and the excerpt does not mention Trump or Huang. Both treat the chip dispute as a serious scandal tied to China, but they differ on where responsibility lies: a Commerce delay in one, presidential favoritism in the other. AP's distinct angle is an interagency rift, with Bessent publicly blaming Commerce.