The congressional scrutiny intensifies an open rift inside the Trump administration after Bessent told CNBC that four agencies had backed blacklisting Megaspeed for months over suspected diversions of Nvidia chips to China. “Treasury, War, USTR, and State were in favor of putting Megaspeed on the entity list for months, but Commerce has the pen,” Bessent said, referring questions to Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security after confronting Lutnick in the White House Situation Room last week. Bessent also said Nvidia’s board cannot simply oust Huang and “think it all goes away,” questioning whether the chipmaker vetted “obviously pass-through shell companies.”

Over the past 12 months, Commerce added zero Chinese tech firms to the Entity List, down from 266 in the prior year, as Lutnick resisted restrictions implemented by Commerce Undersecretary Jeff Kessler’s bureau out of concern they would escalate a trade war with Beijing. Megaspeed purchased $4.8 billion in Nvidia hardware between June 2024 and February 2026, and the Justice Department is also investigating whether entities tied to Alice Huang helped smuggle Super Micro servers into China, sending Super Micro shares down as much as 15%. Singapore authorities separately disclosed that they barred Alice Huang from re-entering the country in February after holding her passport since June 2025 during a Megaspeed server shipment investigation in which they said US agencies provided limited assistance.