Bessent Blames Commerce for Megaspeed Delay: 'Commerce Has the Pen'

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent publicly blamed the Commerce Department on November 13, 2026, for a months-long delay in blacklisting Megaspeed, the Singapore firm at the center of Nvidia's China export-control scandal. Speaking on CNBC, Bessent said four agencies favored the move while Commerce sat on its hands. "Treasury, War, USTR and State were in favor of putting Megaspeed on the entity list for months," Bessent said. "But Commerce has the pen. And you will have to ask them about their internal processes."

AFP called the remarks "a rare public rebuke of one cabinet department by another." The entity list is a trade blacklist maintained by the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS). Any US exporter selling to a listed party needs a license. Megaspeed has not been added.

The stakes for Nvidia are governance, not immediate revenue. The company traded at $160.70 as of 1:03 PM ET on the day of Bessent's remarks, down 3.3 percent. The decline cannot be attributed to his comments alone: Jensen Huang has already resigned as CEO after acknowledging an extramarital affair, leaving the top seat open at a company with a $3.885 trillion market value. In short, two stories are colliding at once — a leadership vacuum and a widening export-control investigation.

What did Bessent actually put on the record?

Less than the headlines suggest. Bessent made his comments in a television interview. His account on X published nothing on Nvidia, Megaspeed or Commerce. No agency has acted since. The entity list remains unchanged, and no Federal Register notice has appeared.

The case against Megaspeed itself remains an allegation, not a finding. Per AFP, the firm "is suspected of helping Chinese firms get around US export controls by buying Nvidia chips for its data centers in Southeast Asia and routing them to China."

The reported scale of the purchases varies by outlet:

• AFP reports Megaspeed traded more than $4 billion in Nvidia chips over two years.
• Reuters, cited by Newsweek, places its purchases of advanced Nvidia AI chips at more than $4.8 billion since June 2024.
• Nvidia has not disclosed what share of its revenue Megaspeed accounts for.

Megaspeed has pushed back. The company says it "takes its compliance obligations under US export control laws extremely seriously" and has hired a US law firm to review its compliance program. That review is ongoing; its findings are not public.

Bessent also reframed the question toward Nvidia itself, asking whether the chipmaker knew what its customer was doing. "The real story here should be: Did Nvidia know their client and was there a robust effort at Nvidia to make sure that there was no leakage and that they were selling to what were obviously pass through shell companies?" he said. He added: "I am sure that the board, now having woken up to what's going on, is going to do a thorough investigation."

Note what Bessent did not say. He offered no evidence that Nvidia knew, no timeline for any board probe, and no commitment from Treasury itself. His agency does not control the entity list — Commerce does. The takeaway in plain words: the sharpest accusation of the day was a question, not a charge.

How much Nvidia revenue actually rides on China?

By Nvidia's own guidance, very little. The company guided to $108.0 billion in revenue for the third quarter of fiscal 2027 — the quarter ending in October 2026 — and that guidance excludes any Data Center compute revenue from China. In the prior second quarter, China Hopper shipments (Hopper being Nvidia's current-generation data-center GPU family) came in at less than 1 percent of Data Center revenue.

That means the financial exposure to a China cutoff is already priced near zero. The real risk is compliance and governance. If investigators conclude that Nvidia ignored warning signs and sold into what Bessent called "obviously pass through shell companies," the damage lands on a $3.885 trillion company with an open CEO seat and a board facing its own credibility test. An 8-K filing (the SEC disclosure form companies must file for material corporate events) disclosing the board's findings would be the first hard signal.

The takeaway: this scandal threatens Nvidia's stewardship, not its sales forecast.

Why is Washington turning up the heat now?

The Senate Banking Committee has escalated from questions to scheduled testimony. The committee asked Huang to testify on December 3 and Lutnick to appear on December 10. Lutnick agreed. Commerce spokesperson Kristen Eichamer said he "has proactively agreed to appear voluntarily."

The committee is not relying on goodwill. In a statement, it said it is "prepared to use all tools at our disposal, including subpoenas" if either man does not appear voluntarily.

Commerce is contesting the feud narrative. A department spokesperson denied that a separately reported confrontation between Bessent and Lutnick at a White House meeting ever took place. A White House official said Trump "maintains complete confidence in the secretary." Bessent himself declined to comment on the reported tensions. Neither department has produced paperwork resolving who said what, and when.

The takeaway: two cabinet departments are now giving contradictory accounts of both the delay and their own relationship.

Does the cabinet feud change the case for owning Nvidia?

It changes the risk profile more than the earnings. The China revenue Nvidia guides to is already near zero, so an entity-listing of Megaspeed would not move the top line. What matters is what the board's investigation finds about Nvidia's diligence on third-party buyers — and whether regulators treat those findings as negligence.

Three dated signals will settle the question:

• A Federal Register notice adding Megaspeed to the entity list.
• Any 8-K filing disclosing the board's findings on the Megaspeed sales.
• Lutnick's scheduled Senate appearance on December 10.

The sequencing matters as much as the substance. If Commerce adds Megaspeed before the hearing, the move follows months of public pressure from Bessent and three other agencies. If Commerce has not acted by December 10, expect the dispute between the two departments to dominate that hearing — with subpoenas on the table and a $3.885 trillion company waiting on the answer.