Get the free digest
Politics

Scott Bessent says Treasury wanted to blacklist Megaspeed ‘for months,’ blaming Howard Lutnick as Nvidia fallout widens: ‘Commerce has the pen’

The Treasury Department, among other federal agencies, were in favor of placing trade restrictions on Megaspeed, but the decision ultimately lay with Lutnick, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC on Friday.

✦ Extractive summary — built from the sources' own reporting•From 4 sources•1 min read•Updated November 13, 2026, 9:06 PM UTC
Key points
  • Driving the news: " Treasury, War, USTR, and State — they were in favor of putting Megaspeed on the entity list for months, but Commerce has the pen," Bessent said on CNBC Friday morning.
  • The scrutiny has raised questions about Lutnick’s job security, but many Republicans are still publicly defending the close Trump ally, leaving few certain that he may really be on his way out.
  • Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is coming under more friendly fire over his department’s policing of AI chip exports.

Bessent confronted Lutnick in the Situation Room following the midterm elections over not placing Megaspeed on the entity list, according to the outlet.

Additional details
  • The Treasury secretary blamed the department for not sanctioning the Singaporean firm and said that Nvidia employees should be held accountable if they sidestepped the law.
  • chips to China, and former Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang admitted he had an affair with an executive from the company.
  • “This guy has nine lives,” a person close to the White House told Semafor.
  • “How many does he have left?” — Eleanor Mueller and Shelby Talcott.
  • has identified the woman, Alice Huang, as a suspected Chinese intelligence asset.

How this summary was made: extractive summary — built from the sources' own reporting. It is drawn only from the reporting of the sources listed below — read the originals for full detail. How we summarize →

Advertisement

Every article behind this summary — 4 articles from 4 outlets

SemaforNovember 13, 2026, 9:06 PM UTC → FortuneNovember 13, 2026, 7:42 PM UTC → NYT PoliticsNovember 13, 2026, 5:05 PM UTC → AxiosNovember 13, 2026, 2:18 PM UTC →

Related stories