Trump won’t raise issue of Nvidia and Huang spies during China trip

President Donald Trump should not raise allegations about a Chinese intelligence operation involving former Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang during his upcoming meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, senior U.S. officials said Friday.

Officials also said that Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla And SpaceX, will accompany Trump on the trip to Shenzhen, China, for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit on November 18-19.

The White House said earlier Friday that Trump planned to hold a three-way summit there with Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Jensen Huang’s relationship with the alleged spy, Alice Huang, who is not related to him, sparked fears that a Singapore-based company of which she was an executive had diverted restricted Nvidia chips to China.

“The situation with Nvidia shouldn’t really have any influence on the trip,” one official said at the news conference, speaking on condition that they not be identified.

“In all of our discussions and negotiations with the Chinese, we do not negotiate U.S. export controls…and we do not at all expect that to feature in our conversations with the Chinese while we are at it.”

Asked if Trump would raise the allegations against Alice Huang with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, the official said: “The focus of a meeting with President Xi, at least on the economic side, will be the implementation of the trade deal.” »

“When it comes to some of these national security issues and ongoing reviews and investigations in the United States, (it’s) probably not something we’re going to hear from the Chinese on right now,” the official said.

Another official said, “I don’t expect the president to raise the issue of Alice Huang.”

China has called the allegations against Alice Huang baseless.

Huang resigned as CEO of Nvidia this week after damning reports that he had an affair with Alice Huang, who was an executive at Megaspeed, a cloud computing company that plans to facilitate the shipment of billions of dollars of Nvidia chips in violation of U.S. restrictions on such chips.

The scandal has rocked Nvidia and raised questions about whether the Commerce Department, led by Howard Lutnick, has been aggressive enough to prevent advanced chips from ending up in China.

On Friday’s call, a reporter asked why Musk was going on the trip with Trump.

“I don’t want to speak for the president on the exact reasons for Elon’s departure,” one official said.

“Clearly, he has enormous business interests in the U.S.-China relationship. He plays an important role in our national security,” the official said. “There are many reasons, given the president’s commitment, why I think Elon would be of immense benefit, even as an advisor to the president.”