Trump names Wall Street CEO Howard Lutnick as Commerce secretaryExBulletin

Howard Lutnick, Chairman and CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, speaks during a rally for President-elect Donald Trump at Madison Square Garden in New York on October 27, 2024. ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images/AFP .

switch caption ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images/AFP

President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Howard Lutnick, a billionaire investor and veteran Wall Street CEO, as his next Commerce secretary.

Trump, in a statement released Tuesday, also said Lutnick would “lead our tariff and trade agenda, with additional direct responsibility for the Office of the United States Trade Representative.”

At Commerce, he will be responsible for enforcing the sweeping tariffs that Trump campaigned on and for which Lutnick has expressed fervent public support.

Lutnick, who rebuilt the Cantor Fitzgerald investment bank after the Sept. 11 attacks that killed nearly 700 employees, was little known outside Wall Street. But he rose to prominence and power this fall, after Trump named him co-chair of his transition team in August.

In recent days, Lutnick was seen as a leading contender to lead Trump's Treasury Department, in what has turned into a public and messy battle for the critical role.

As the leader of Trump's transition, Lutnick is responsible for hiring thousands of federal employees. But he now joins a cabinet that has pledged to fire many more people as the new Trump administration promises to cut federal agencies and spending. (Trump has already appointed Tesla CEO Elon Musk to co-lead what he calls a “Department of Government Effectiveness.”)

And Lutnick seems excited about the cost-cutting possibilities.

“How much do you think we can get out of this wasted $6.5 trillion Harris-Biden budget?” Lutnick asked Musk, his fellow billionaire super Trump supporter, on stage at a rally at Madison Square Garden last month. When Musk responded with an estimate of “at least $2 trillion,” Lutnick raised his arm and let out a guttural cry: “Yeah!

Lutnick was marked by September 11

Lutnick first gained national prominence during a tragedy: In 2001, Cantor Fitzgerald's headquarters was located near the top of the North Tower of the World Trade Center. When terrorists flew an airliner into the building on September 11, the 658 Cantor employees already at their desks had no way to escape before the tower collapsed. Lutnick's brother, Gary, was among them.

“If we're going to work, we're going to do it to take care of our friends' families,” Lutnick told his other employees that evening, he told NPR in 2016. “We went from a big business that was making a million dollars a day for a company that was losing a million dollars a day.”

Today, Cantor has several businesses, including a cryptocurrency operation. Lutnick continued to supervise them while co-chairing Trump's transition team, an arrangement that raised questions about how he accommodates federal conflict-of-interest guidelines.

Lutnick denied mixing up his roles. He divides his time between his responsibilities as CEO, which he exercises from 6:30 a.m. to 9 a.m., then from 4 p.m. to 10:30 p.m., and volunteering for the Trump team, the Wall Street Journal reported in October.

In accordance with Trump's economic policy

Lutnick has previously donated to politicians in both parties, including to Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign, according to OpenSecrets.org. But in recent years, he has become a major Republican donor, donating millions of dollars to Trump's campaign and hosting a $15 million fundraiser at his home in the Hamptons this summer.

He has promised to build the next Trump administration with loyalists. And he loudly echoed many of Trump's financial policy proposals, including his support for tariffs, tax cuts and cryptocurrencies (in which, like Trump, Lutnick also has business interests).

President-elect Donald Trump speaks at the America First Agenda Summit in Washington, DC, July 26, 2022. Drew Angerer/Getty Images/Getty Images North America .

rock caption Drew Angerer/Getty Images/Getty Images North America

At the Madison Square Garden rally last month, Lutnick described his vision for transforming the American economy by going back 125 years to 1900.

“When was America great? At the turn of the century, our economy was booming,” he said. “We had no income tax, and all we had was tariffs.”

Lutnick would be responsible for promoting Trump's economic agenda

As commerce secretary, Lutnick would oversee a vast federal bureaucracy including the National Weather Service, the Census Bureau and the agency responsible for calculating the nation's gross domestic product.

Typically, the secretary of state is also a traveling salesman for U.S. exports, a job that could be complicated if Trump's threat to impose tariffs on all imported goods triggers a trade war with foreign governments.

The Department of Commerce plays a key role in enforcing tariffs and, in some cases, granting exemptions from import taxes.

Project 2025, a planning document drafted by Trump allies, calls for dismantling the weather service's parent agency, NOAA, and either eliminating, privatizing its functions or transferring them to States. Although Trump has sought to deny any connection, there are many overlaps between Project 2025 and his agenda.

Wilbur Ross, who served as Commerce secretary in the first Trump administration, came under scrutiny for antagonizing his department's scientists when they clashed with the president.

Ross reportedly threatened to fire officials who oversee the National Weather Service after forecasters tried to correct an erroneous hurricane warning from Trump.

Ross also attempted to include a citizenship question in the 2020 census, despite warnings from government experts that it could compromise the accuracy of the count. This decision was ultimately blocked by the United States Supreme Court.

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