Trump Won't Raise Nvidia Spy Allegations During China Trip

President Donald Trump does not plan to raise allegations that a suspected Chinese spy had an affair with former Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang during his upcoming trip to China, senior U.S. officials said Friday evening.

Officials also said Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, will accompany Trump to Shenzhen, China, for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. The White House said Trump plans a three-way summit there with Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Jensen Huang's relationship with the suspected spy, Alice Huang, who is not related to him, has raised concerns that a Singapore-based company where she was an executive diverted restricted Nvidia chips to China. Huang resigned this week as Nvidia's CEO after reports about the affair. The scandal has rocked Nvidia and raised questions about whether the Commerce Department, led by Trump's friend Howard Lutnick, has been aggressive enough at blocking advanced chips from ending up in China.

An official said on the press call that the situation with Nvidia should not really have any bearing on the trip. Officials said the U.S. does not negotiate American export controls in its discussions with the Chinese and does not expect the issue to figure in any conversations while there. Asked whether Trump would raise the allegations against Alice Huang with Xi, the official said the focus of the meeting with Xi, at least on the economic side, will be about implementation of the trade agreement. National security matters and investigations underway in the U.S. are probably not something the administration will read the Chinese in on at this moment, the official added.

Another official said they do not expect the president to raise the Alice Huang issue. Huang resigned as Nvidia's CEO after reports that he had an affair with Alice Huang, an executive at Megaspeed, a cloud-computing company being eyed for possible facilitation of sending billions of dollars worth of Nvidia chips in violation of U.S. restrictions.

Nvidia shares were down about 2.0% in delayed trading. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has agreed to testify before the Senate Banking Committee on December 10 as lawmakers probe Nvidia chip exports to China.