Donald Trump picks Howard Lutnick to run commerce department

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Donald Trump has said he will nominate Wall Street investor and campaign donor Howard Lutnick to run his commerce department, putting the billionaire in charge of imposing the sweeping tariffs the president-elect pitched to voters.

Lutnick, who is the co-chair of Trump’s transition team, had also been a contender to lead the Treasury department in the new administration. He is the chief executive of investment firm Cantor Fitzgerald.

Trump on Tuesday announced that in addition to leading the Department of Commerce, Lutnick would have “direct responsibility” for the office of the US trade representative.

In previous administrations, the US office of the trade representative, which was created in 1974 and oversees negotiations with US trading partners, has reported directly to the president.

If confirmed by the Senate, The 63-year-old billionaire investor would be responsible for shoring up US businesses and would play a central role in enacting Trump’s plan to impose sweeping tariffs on the country’s trading partners. The president-elect has proposed a 60 per cent tariff on Chinese imports as well as a universal tariff of up to 20 per cent.

The commerce department has roughly 50,000 workers and a budget of $11bn. As well as overseeing elements of trade and technology policy, the department promotes US business interests abroad, collects economic data and is the home to the government’s meteorologists. 

Under Trump and President Joe Biden, the significance of the department has grown, and it now plays a pivotal role in issuing restrictions on the sensitive technologies that the US exports to China.

Lutnick, who has never held a government position before, was a staunch defender of the president-elect’s policies as he emerged as one of Trump’s biggest cheerleaders during the election campaign. This earned him top speaking slots at big rallies, such as at New York’s Madison Square Garden.

“When was America great? At the turn of the century, our economy was rocking! This was 125 years ago,” Lutnick told the crowd in New York. “We had no income tax. And all we had was tariffs.”

In recent days, Trump had considered Lutnick for Treasury secretary, but infighting between the investor’s camp and those backing Scott Bessent, a hedge fund manager who was widely seen as the leading pick, upended the selection process.

Lutnick earned the backing of Elon Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur who has become a close adviser of Trump. Musk described Lutnick as a Treasury secretary who would “actually enact change”, in contrast with Bessent, who he dubbed the “business-as-usual choice”.

Beyond the Treasury secretary post, which is the most important economic job in a president’s administration, Trump has yet to decide on who will serve as director of his National Economic Council.

Wendy Cutler, vice-president of the Asia Society Policy Institute, said having the US trade representative’s office report to the commerce department was “very unusual”.

Previous efforts to merge USTR and the commerce department “never got anywhere” because of congressional opposition, she added.

Before becoming one of Trump’s top donors, Lutnick gave money to so-called establishment Democrats and Republicans, including Chuck Schumer and Jeb Bush.

Lutnick made contributions to Hillary Clinton’s 2008 and 2016 presidential bids, hosted a fundraiser for her in 2015 and still considers the Clintons friends, noting that Bill Clinton and his daughter Chelsea came to his firm’s charity day this past September 11.

But Lutnick has also been close to the president-elect for decades, even appearing in 2008 on Trump’s NBC show The Celebrity Apprentice. The Cantor Fitzgerald boss told the Financial Times in October that he gave more than $10mn to Trump’s 2024 campaign, donated another $500,000 for the transition and raised a total of about $75mn.