White House discussing Commerce Secretary Lutnick's future after Nvidia spy scandal, Reuters reports

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Senior White House officials are discussing whether Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick should be pushed out, two people familiar with the situation told Reuters on Thursday, as the spy scandal around Nvidia's former chief executive Jensen Huang reaches into the cabinet.

A growing number of lawmakers have criticised Lutnick for the administration's refusal to add dozens of Chinese companies to a key American trade blacklist, and for whether the government properly oversaw Nvidia's exports to China. Senator Elizabeth Warren, who will chair the Senate Banking Committee from January, and incoming Senate Foreign Relations chairman Chris Coons wrote to Lutnick, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and chief of staff Stephen Miller demanding that he explain why export-control loopholes have not been closed.

The White House has not moved. An official said earlier on Thursday that President Donald Trump "maintains complete confidence in the secretary and his ability to carry out the position", and neither the White House nor the Commerce Department responded to Reuters' requests for comment on the discussions. The criticism of Lutnick predates Huang's resignation on Thursday.

The report rests on two unnamed people familiar with the discussions, and no decision has been announced. What is on the record is the lawmakers' letter and the White House's statement of confidence, which point in opposite directions. The export-control question at the centre of it — whether American chips reached China through Megaspeed, and who in government knew — is the subject of a Justice Department inquiry that the administration has not publicly addressed.

Lutnick's job now turns on a question larger than one cabinet post. The Commerce Department writes the export rules that decide which chips can be sold where, and the Huang affair has put those rules under the brightest light they have faced. If the White House keeps him, it will have to defend a record its own party's critics call lax; if it does not, the replacement inherits the same inquiry and the same blacklist decisions, with a Senate that has already made its view plain.