Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is scheduled to travel on Air Force One to China on Wednesday as the administration confronts intense pressure over chip export controls.
President Donald Trump arrives in China on Wednesday for meetings with China’s leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin during the APEC summit. Lutnick joins the presidential delegation following fierce internal clashes regarding trade policies and export restrictions.
Washington officials have targeted Lutnick for slow-walking Commerce Department restrictions on certain artificial intelligence chip exports to China. Critics also point to his relationship with former Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who resigned last week after admitting to an extramarital affair with an Nvidia customer suspected of acting as a Chinese spy.
The woman involved, Alice Huang, served as an executive at Megaspeed, a firm currently under United States investigation for improper chip smuggling into China. Republicans accuse Lutnick of defying the president and warning that his position remains precarious.
Bessent and Officials Push for Megaspeed Blacklist
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and other administration officials pushed the commerce secretary for months to place Megaspeed on a national security blacklist. Bessent noted in an interview on CNBC last week that Treasury “has been pushing for this for months” while Commerce “has the pen.” Bessent is also scheduled to join the presidential delegation.
Critics accuse Lutnick of permitting Nvidia to indirectly sell advanced chips to China beyond legal limits through loopholes he has declined to close. Lawmakers also cite giving the chipmaker unfettered access to industry rule-making processes.
A senior United States official told reporters ahead of the trip that the Nvidia scandal “should not really have any bearing on the trip.”
“These are national security matters that we develop in the administration interagency process, and we don’t expect it to figure at all in any of our conversations with the Chinese while we’re there.”
said a senior United States official.
Future Uncertainty in Beijing
The White House said that it “maintains complete confidence in the secretary.” Lutnick previously planned to attend Semafor’s Silicon Valley & The World convening alongside OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Amazon CEO Andy Jassy before joining the presidential trip.
His inclusion on Air Force One shows the president intends to keep him close during high-stakes diplomatic talks in Beijing.
“This guy has nine lives,” a person close to the White House told Semafor. “How many does he have left?”
Further details regarding the enforcement of trade restrictions remain under review by the administration interagency process.
