Howard Lutnick, the US commerce secretary, could be ousted in the wake of the Nvidia spy scandal, with White House officials reportedly discussing whether he should be fired.

Mr Lutnick has been criticised for his apparent lack of action after being sent an intelligence report about an alleged spy plot orchestrated by Beijing targeting Nvidia, the AI chip manufacturer.

Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s chief executive, resigned on Thursday following reports that he had an affair with Alice Huang, a businesswoman whom US intelligence suspected of being a spy.

A US intelligence report circulated among senior figures within the Trump administration earlier this year reportedly warned about Mr Huang’s relationship with Ms Huang.

Ms Huang was associated with a company called Megaspeed, which bought billions of dollars’ worth of Nvidia chips in recent years, according to The New York Times.

Despite reported concerns within the administration, Megaspeed was not added to the commerce department’s blacklist of companies posing national security risks.

Officials are now questioning whether Mr Lutnick should be fired, according to the Associated Press, which cited two unnamed people familiar with the situation.

Nvidia is one of the US’s most important AI companies and Mr Huang had developed a close relationship with Mr Trump since the president returned to the White House last year.

The company donated $25m to help build the president’s White House ballroom and Mr Huang accompanied Mr Trump on a trip to China in May.

Mr Lutnick reportedly clashed with Scott Bessent, the treasury secretary, at a meeting at the White House Situation Room last week after Mr Bessent asked why the commerce secretary had not added Megaspeed to the blacklist, according to Axios.

The commerce department told the outlet that reports of the confrontation between the two senior figures were “false”.

It is not the first time questions have been asked about Mr Lutnick’s future in the Trump administration. Both Democratic and Republican politicians called for him to resign after he appeared in the Epstein files released earlier this year.

Before joining the Trump administration, Mr Lutnick was the chairman and chief executive of the investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald.

During his time on Wall Street, he lived next door to Jeffrey Epstein and visited his island in 2012, several years after he had claimed to have cut off contact with the convicted paedophile.

Mr Lutnick was later questioned by Congress about his relationship with Epstein.

Despite admitting to having lunch with Epstein on his island, he downplayed his relationship with the disgraced financier to the committee.

“I barely had anything to do with him,” he said at the time.