Lutnick stalls Trump's Nvidia chip crackdown, Axios reports

U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick stalled President Donald Trump’s crackdown on companies suspected of diverting Nvidia’s chips to China, Axios reported Wednesday, citing high-level sources. Trump authorized the crackdown last Thursday, the third such action this year, after consulting billionaire Elon Musk. Axios said Lutnick repeatedly obstructed the effort, and during a Situation Room meeting, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent confronted him over his department’s resistance to implementing export controls. The report follows lawmakers urging tougher chip export restrictions and Nvidia’s board investigating CEO Jensen Huang’s ties to a Chinese businesswoman. The U.S. has added no entities to its trade blacklist since October 2025, the longest gap in over a decade.