At major moments in President Trump’s second term, he has looked up during an economic speech or diplomatic dinner and asked a version of the same question: “Where’s Jensen?”
Jensen Huang has usually been out there, somewhere in the room.
Mr. Huang, who was until Thursday the leather-jacketed chief executive of Nvidia, one of the world’s largest companies, had impressed the president with his success, his money and his argument that keeping China dependent on American-made semiconductor chips and technology could help maintain U.S. dominance over Beijing.
Mr. Trump made sure to have the technology executive with him during pivotal U.S.-China meetings this year. The president invited him to come to China in May when he went to meet with Xi Jinping, China’s leader, stopping in Alaska, where Mr. Huang joined him on Air Force One at the last minute. And Mr. Huang was at the head table with the president when Mr. Trump hosted a state dinner for Mr. Xi at the White House in September.
But when Mr. Trump travels to China for another meeting with Mr. Xi at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation in Shenzhen this week, Mr. Huang, the man who has been influential in shaping the president’s views about technological competition with China, is not expected to be at his side.
Last week, Mr. Huang stepped down from his role at Nvidia after revelations that he had engaged in affairs, including one with Alice Huang, a woman who U.S. intelligence officials believe is an asset of Beijing.
Mr. Huang’s sudden fall and the U.S. finding that he was targeted by Chinese intelligence do not appear to have altered Mr. Trump’s estimation of the former Nvidia leader — or his approach to dealing with his Chinese counterpart in this week’s meeting. (Beijing has called the U.S. intelligence conclusions “smears and slanders.”)
So far, the president has not pressed Mr. Xi about his country’s espionage efforts or stepped in to resolve a raging debate within his administration about tightening export controls of A.I. technology and certain chips to China. Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, who has argued for less strict limits on chip exports to Asia, is expected to travel with him. In Shenzhen, Mr. Trump will participate in a meeting with Mr. Xi and, later, with Mr. Xi and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, in the first such gathering of the three leaders.
“Well, the big thing is, was the woman a spy?” Mr. Trump said in an interview with the podcaster and sports commentator Stephen A. Smith on Thursday, when asked if he thought Mr. Huang should have resigned. “And I don’t know if that’s been determined yet, but if the woman was a spy, yes. If the woman was not a spy, perhaps it would be different. But I can tell you this: Somehow, he’ll end up in his feet. I mean, I know him. I know him pretty well. I always thought of him as a fine man.”
Mr. Trump said last week that he did not plan to bring up the Nvidia matter with Mr. Xi but suggested that the Chinese leader could bring it up with him.
The president also said that he did not recall being briefed that Mr. Huang was in a close relationship with Alice Huang, a Chinese executive believed by the United States to be a Chinese intelligence asset.
But Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Mr. Trump aboard Air Force One in May en route to China about the sensitive intelligence showing that Nvidia’s chief executive was in a relationship with the woman and that she was believed to be a Chinese spy, The New York Times reported last week. It was at least the second time the president was briefed on the intelligence, The Times reported.
Mr. Trump has continued to defend Mr. Huang, calling him an “honorable man” and questioning reports that he was briefed on the government’s intelligence findings.
“I’d have to check,” he told reporters last week in response to a question about when he first learned of the matter. “I’d certainly check with the intelligence people. They could have been mentioned. Certainly, it didn’t make much of an impact on me.”
The president’s blasé response to espionage allegations that have upended one of the world’s largest companies belies the economic and political storm caused by the revelations of Mr. Huang’s behavior. It also raises questions about how Mr. Trump would conduct himself during his meeting with Mr. Xi, an authoritarian leader whose friendship and admiration the president has courted.
“Trump has stood by Huang personally, and my read is that he sees espionage as something major powers just do to each other,” Craig Singleton, a China expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a nonpartisan think tank, said during a briefing last week. “He wants a very successful meeting and to show that he can manage the relationship with Xi Jinping.”
Indeed, Mr. Trump has said that espionage is the price of dealing with a powerful adversary. “You know what they say? That China spies on us. I say you’re right, and we spy on them, too,” he said in September.
White House officials said Friday that the Nvidia matter was a national security issue, and they did not expect the president to discuss it with Mr. Xi during their encounter.
In his two previous meetings this year with the Chinese leader, Mr. Trump showed little interest in extracting concessions from China.
Mr. Trump struck a conciliarly tone with Mr. Xi during his visit to Beijing in May, emphasizing their personal relationship. And when Mr. Xi visited Washington in the fall, weeks after Mr. Trump decried what he claimed was meddling by Beijing in the 2020 election, the president leaned into the pageantry of the occasion. The state visit produced little in terms of policy announcements on matters of tension between the two countries — on A.I., trade or the war in Iran.
But as Mr. Trump prepares to head to China again, Mr. Singleton noted that “the politics back in Washington are moving in a very different direction.”
The Trump administration is now facing questions and criticism over whether officials had properly policed the sale of chips to China. On Friday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent publicly blamed the Commerce Department for failing to curb the sale of advanced Nvidia technology to the Singaporean firm Megaspeed, which employed Ms. Huang and built data centers that provide computing power to Chinese companies.
“You will have to ask them about their internal processes,” he said of the Commerce Department, adding that his own agency had supported a stricter approach. “Treasury and my deputy has been pushing for this for months at the deputies level.”
Mr. Bessent has led the administration’s efforts to extend a trade truce with Beijing that expires in January. Despite continuing negotiations and the pause of a tit-for-tat trade war, administration officials remain frustrated with China’s restrictions on exports of crucial rare-earth metals and rare-earth magnets. Mr. Trump is expected to bring up that issue with Mr. Xi in Shenzhen.
While administration officials say the president will focus his meetings on rare-earth exports, nuclear proliferation and the war with Iran, Republicans and Democrats in Washington are demanding answers on Nvidia from Mr. Huang and Mr. Lutnick, who both have been asked to testify before the Senate Banking Committee in December.
“If Beijing was trying to keep American chips flowing, it may have helped build the bipartisan case for cutting that access off,” Mr. Singleton said.
It remains to be seen if that political pressure will force Mr. Trump to impose new restrictions on technology exports, or make another move that could constrain China.
Kenton Thibaut, a senior resident China fellow at the Atlantic Council, said that the Nvidia scandal was a “miserable” scenario for the Chinese, whose diplomatic aim with Mr. Trump is to placate him and keep a competitive relationship steady while reducing dependence on the economic choke points that Americans control.
“They wanted to keep this stasis in U.S.-China relations, prevent sort of any more export controls from coming into place, play nice with Trump and not rock the boat in any way,” Ms. Thibaut said. “And this is kind of like a disaster for them.”
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