WASHINGTON — Sen. Chris Van Hollen said on Sunday that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick should be fired over the administration’s handling of controls on advanced chip exports to China, escalating the political fallout from the scandal that forced Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang to resign last week.
“I think he should be fired,” Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, told ABC News in an interview that aired Sunday on “This Week.” Van Hollen is the top Democrat on the Senate subcommittee that oversees Commerce Department funding, and he is running to be Senate majority leader in the next Congress.
Van Hollen argued that Commerce should have placed Megaspeed, a Singapore-based company suspected of diverting advanced Nvidia chips to China, on the government’s export blacklist after receiving information about the company. The Commerce Department had been investigating Megaspeed since 2024 to determine whether it had run afoul of U.S. export rules, but stopped short of placing the firm on the so-called Entity List, a trade blacklist that bars U.S. suppliers from selling to listed firms without a license.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on CNBC on Friday that a wide swath of the administration — including the Treasury and State departments, the Pentagon and the U.S. Trade Representative — had favored blacklisting Megaspeed, but that the Commerce Department had failed to follow through. “Commerce…has the pen…and you will have to ask them about their internal process,” Bessent said. He also said the inaction had violated directives from President Donald Trump himself, who had made clear that China should not receive Nvidia chips above the older H100 model.
Some of Trump’s advisers, reeling from the fallout of Huang’s resignation, have begun discussing whether Lutnick should be dismissed, according to people familiar with the conversations cited by CNN. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, has also called for Lutnick to go, writing “Lutnick must go” in a social media post. Former Vice President Mike Pence, speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, demanded answers about U.S. chip exports following Huang’s departure.
Huang resigned on Thursday after revelations that he had extramarital affairs with two women, one of whom may be connected to China. That woman is Alice Huang, a Megaspeed executive. U.S. officials concluded Alice Huang was a Chinese intelligence asset who had cultivated a close relationship with Jensen Huang, CNN reported, though the network also reported that the intelligence collected so far does not prove she was acting as a spy for Beijing. Nvidia named chief financial officer Colette Kress interim chief executive and Harvey Jones board chairman.
Both Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill have demanded that Lutnick answer questions about what he knew, and when. House Foreign Affairs Committee Democrats wrote to Lutnick demanding to know what he and his export control chief, Jeffrey Kessler, knew about Megaspeed, and when. Senate Democrats directed Lutnick to preserve documents, communications and records related to Nvidia’s exports of advanced chips. Lutnick has agreed to testify alongside Huang before the Senate Banking Committee on December 10.
The White House said on Thursday that Trump “maintains complete confidence in the secretary and his ability to carry out the position as the most transformative Commerce Secretary in modern history.” Lutnick was expected to join Trump on a trip to China next week, and officials have not indicated those plans have changed. Trump is preparing to meet next week with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Shenzhen, and questions surrounding the scandal — and the fresh push to limit sales of advanced chips to China — are likely to persist into that meeting.
