Democrats Launch Inquiry Into Nvidia China Sales and Trump Era Policies
Democratic lawmakers on Thursday opened an inquiry into how the Trump administration handled Nvidia’s chip sales to China.
The Tech TL;DR:
- Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee and Senate Finance Committee opened an inquiry on Thursday into Nvidia’s China chip sales and administration export policies.
- Nvidia ousted CEO Jensen Huang on Thursday after he confessed to an extramarital affair with an executive at a Singapore-based customer company suspected of routing chips to China.
- The inquiry examines a revenue-sharing agreement where Nvidia and AMD agreed to share 15% of their China sales revenue with the U.S. government to secure export licenses.
Megaspeed, a Singapore-based customer of Nvidia suspected by U.S. authorities of assisting in the diversion of high-end Nvidia processors to China, employed Alice Huang, who has been accused of being a Chinese spy.
The Democratic inquiry comes from Rep. Richard Neal, the top Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, and Sen. Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee. As the minority party, they can ask questions but can’t compel answers.
The humdinger of a letter asks the Commerce Department to preserve records about an arrangement they find questionable and, they allege, illegal.
“The scheme worked like this,” as the letter describes it. President Trump gave the green light for Nvidia’s H200 chip transactions with China on the condition that the Taiwanese-built semiconductors were first routed to the United States.
According to the correspondence, Trump subsequently imposed a tariff upon their arrival, effectively skimming a portion of Nvidia’s China revenue via a mechanism that appears to function as an unconstitutional export tax. Then the Commerce Department, under Howard Lutnick, issued an export license.
As reported by the Associated Press at the time, Nvidia and AMD both consented in August 2025 to hand over 15% of their China chip sales income to the federal government to obtain export permits. Yet the letter questions why Lutnick continued to allow Megaspeed to buy chips even after he was reportedly informed by U.S. intelligence of their suspicions of Alice Huang and of Jensen Huang’s relationship with her.
The probe questions why the agency reportedly cleared other Asian entities to purchase Nvidia chips despite those businesses lacking a physical office at their registered locations. The inquiry is aimed at the administration, not just at Nvidia and Huang.
The letter also questions how Nvidia’s donations to Trump’s projects factored in. The communication points out that the export agreement received authorization subsequent to Trump discovering Jensen Huang’s vulnerable situation involving his liaison with an alleged spy, and following a $26 million contribution from Nvidia toward Trump-backed initiatives, including the ballroom.
The text seems to inquire whether Trump leveraged his awareness of the romance to extract financial contributions from Nvidia. During a Sunday “60 Minutes” broadcast featuring President Trump, he recounted how he and his administration warned an anonymous artificial intelligence executive with potential imprisonment, prompting a complete shift in the executive’s demeanor thereafter.
Following the emergence of the alleged espionage scandal, this represents the second congressional probe launched into Nvidia’s Chinese market activities and its interactions with Trump. Led by Republicans, the oversight group incorporates senior members from the House Intelligence Committee, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, and the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party.