Trump’s commerce chief Lutnick criticised over chip exports after Nvidia CEO resignation

Detailed summary

Lawmakers criticise Howard Lutnick over US chip exports to China after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s resignation. Read more at straitstimes.com.

US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is being accused of not doing enough to restrict AI chip shipments to China.

WASHINGTON - A growing number of lawmakers are criticising Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick over the administration’s refusal to add dozens of Chinese companies to a key US trade blacklist, and over whether the government was properly overseeing Nvidia’s exports to China.

Criticism of Lutnick’s actions predates the Nov 12 resignation of Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, who announced he would step down as CEO of the leading AI chipmaker after revelations of an affair with Alice Huang, who US authorities suspect of spying for Beijing.

But the charge that Lutnick has not done enough to restrict AI chip shipments to China has bubbled up as the fallout of Huang’s actions grows.

In June, Reuters reported that the Trump administration ​had held ⁠off from adding China’s AI startup DeepSeek, memory chipmaker CXMT and more than 100 other companies flagged as national security risks to a trade blacklist.

The US ⁠has not ​posted any additions to that list ​since October 2025, the longest stretch between new postings in more than a decade. Reuters earlier reported that the US Commerce Department has not added new Chinese companies to that list for fear of escalating tensions between the US and China.

“Secretary Howard Lutnick and Under Secretary Jeffrey Kessler must explain why they have not closed export control loopholes and act today to ensure our advanced technology is not fuelling China’s military,” Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, said.

Warren, who will chair the Senate Banking Committee starting in January, and incoming Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair Chris Coons wrote to Lutnick, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, telling the administration to preserve all documents related to Nvidia’s exports of advanced AI chips to China and related national security risks.

The senators cited reports of Jensen Huang’s…

Opening of the article, excerpted from The Straits Times. To read the rest, open the article on the publisher's site.