Donald Trump has named investor Howard Lutnick, the co-chair of his transition team, to lead the US commerce department.
In his announcement, Trump said Lutnick, the chief executive of financial firm Cantor Fitzgerald, would spearhead the administration’s “tariff and trade agenda”.
Lutnick had also been in the running for treasury secretary, a more high-profile role.
Trump has yet to make a decision about that closely watched post, which has sweeping authority in areas such as economic and tax policy.
The fight over whom to pick has spilled into public view. Over the weekend, billionaire Elon Musk promoted Lutnick for the position and criticised one of the alternative candidates, Scott Bessent, as too “business as usual”.
Lutnick, a self-described “strong capitalist”, has praised Trump for offering a “competitive growth model”.
During the campaign, he served as a spokesman for some of Trump’s most controversial plans, including wide-ranging tariffs and the elimination of the income tax.
His embrace of those views put him out of step with some on Wall Street, which has historically seen tariffs as bad for corporate America.
Commerce is smaller than the treasury department, with a workforce of about 50,000 people.
It is a key player in areas where business and national security interests collide, such as restricting technology exports to China or enacting tariffs to protect US steel.
The department is also heavily involved in government efforts to boost domestic manufacturing and US companies.
Beyond its role in the US-China trade and tech war, its responsibilities include patent approvals, publishing economic data, and conducting the US census.
In the announcement, Trump called Lutnick a “dynamic force on Wall Street for more than 30 years” and praised his transition work finding people to help staff the new administration.
He said Lutnick would also have special responsibility for the office of the US Trade Representative, which is not officially part of the Commerce department.
Who is Howard Lutnick?
Lutnick, a native of Long Island, New York, is a long-time Republican and supporter of Trump, with whom he overlapped in the New York social scene. He appeared on Trump’s reality TV show, The Apprentice, in 2008, according to the online film and television database imdb.
He joined Cantor Fitzgerald right after his 1983 graduation from Haverford College, which he attended on scholarship. He lost both of his parents as a teenager – his mother to cancer and his father to a medical mistake.
Within 10 years, he rose to be president and chief executive of the firm. It 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, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, he said 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”.
