Democrats open Nvidia inquiry over Trump chip-sale 'scheme'

Democrats on the House Ways and Means and Senate Finance committees opened an inquiry Thursday into how the Trump administration handled Nvidia’s chip sales to China, hours after Nvidia ousted founder Jensen Huang as CEO. Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.) and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the top Democrats on those committees, sent a letter to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick asking him to preserve records tied to what they call a questionable, and they allege, illegal arrangement. As the minority party, they can pose questions but cannot compel the administration to answer.

The letter lays out what it calls the arrangement: Trump agreed to let Nvidia sell its H200 chips to China on the condition the chips, made in Taiwan, first passed through the United States, where Trump imposed a tariff the letter says was “effectively taking a cut of Nvidia’s sales to China through what appears to be an unconstitutional export tax system.” The Commerce Department, under Lutnick, then issued the export license. That arrangement is distinct from an already-public one: in August 2025, Nvidia and AMD agreed to share 15% of their China chip revenue with the U.S. government to secure export licenses, the Associated Press reported at the time.

The letter also asks why Lutnick kept allowing Megaspeed — a Singapore-based Nvidia customer U.S. officials suspect helped route advanced Nvidia chips into China, and whose executive is Alice Huang, the alleged Chinese spy at the center of the affair reports — to keep buying chips even after U.S. intelligence reportedly told him of suspicions about her and about Jensen Huang’s relationship with her. It also asks why the department reportedly cleared other Asian buyers whose listed addresses showed no real physical presence, making clear the inquiry targets the administration, not only Nvidia and Huang. A further section questions whether Nvidia’s $26 million in donations to Trump’s projects, including his ballroom, factored into the decision: the letter notes the export deal was approved after Trump learned that Huang’s affair had left him in what it calls a compromised position, raising the question of whether Trump used that knowledge to extract the donations.

This Democratic probe is the second into Nvidia’s China dealings and Trump’s role since the spy-affair reporting broke. A separate, Republican-led group spanning the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the House Intelligence Committee had already demanded Huang testify behind closed doors, threatening a subpoena; Huang agreed on Thursday, after his resignation.

Why it matters

The inquiry carries no subpoena power, but it puts the tariff-for-export-license arrangement and Nvidia’s donations to Trump’s projects on the record just as a separate, Republican-led probe compels Huang’s own testimony — keeping Nvidia’s China chip strategy under scrutiny from both parties at once.