Donald Trump has tapped investor Howard Lutnick, the co-chair of his transition team, to head the US commerce department.
In his announcement, Trump said Lutnick, the chief executive of financial firm Cantor Fitzgerald, would lead the administration’s “tariff and trade agenda”.
Lutnick was also considered for treasury secretary, a more prominent position.
Mr. Trump has yet to decide on that closely watched post, which carries sweeping authority over areas such as the economy and tax policy.
The battle for who to choose spilled into public view. Over the weekend, billionaire Elon Musk advocated for Mr. Lutnick for the job and panned one of the other contenders, Scott Bessent, as too “business as usual.”.
Lutnick, who describes himself as a “strong capitalist,” has said he admires Trump for proposing a “competitive growth model.”
In the campaign, he was one of the few voices speaking out in favor of some of Trump’s most aggressively populist proposals, including sweeping tariffs and zeroing out the income tax.
Embracing such views put him at odds with some on Wall Street, where tariffs have traditionally been viewed as bad for corporate America.
Commerce is a more modest entity than the treasury, with a workforce of around 50,000 people.
It plays a central role in areas of business-nation intersection, such as curbing exports of high-tech goods to China or imposing tariffs to protect US steel.
The department is also heavily involved with government efforts to boost domestic manufacturing and US companies.
Beyond its role in the US-China trade and tech war, it oversees patent approvals, publishing economic data, and conducting the US census.
In his statement about appointing Lutnick, Trump referred to him as a “dynamic force on Wall Street for more than 30 years” and lauded the work he’s done finding people to help staff the new administration.
Lutnick would also have special responsibility for the office of the US Trade Representative, not officially part of the Commerce department, he said.
Who Is Howard Lutnick?
Lutnick, a lifelong Republican from Long Island, New York, knew Trump through the social scene in New York.
He was an apprentice on Trump’s reality TV show, The Apprentice, in 2008, according to imdb.com, which tracks films and television shows.
He entered Cantor Fitzgerald immediately after graduation from Haverford College in 1983.
He graduated on scholarship. His mother died of cancer when he was a teen, and his father died from a medical error.
He became president and chief operating officer of the company within 10 years. The company is known today in part for its investments in crypto and its affiliate in the property industry, the Newmark brokerage.
Lutnick’s public profile rose after the September 11 attacks, which killed more than 600 people working in the company’s offices that morning, including his brother.
He was not at work because he was taking one of his children to kindergarten.
Lutnick, who speaks with a New York accent and is known for his blustery style, wept on TV in the days after.
Twenty years later, speaking to the Wall Street Journal, he acknowledged the day was a dividing line in his life, “before 9/11 and after” and for years following “it was still so raw it felt like yesterday”.
