U.S. President-elect Donald Trump plans to nominate Wall Street financier Howard Lutnick as commerce secretary in his new administration, Trump announced on Tuesday.
The 63-year-old billionaire has been co-chair of Trump’s transition team, helping to consider and vet numerous people to assume top-level government jobs after Trump takes office on January 20. Lutnick has been an outspoken Trump supporter in recent months.
The CEO and chairman of the Cantor Fitzgerald global financial services firm, Lutnick was reported to be in contention to become Treasury secretary, another top job Trump has yet to fill. But Trump associates say Lutnick fell out of favor for the Treasury job amid conflicts with another leading candidate, investor Scott Bessent.
If nominated to become commerce secretary and confirmed by the Senate, as would be likely, Lutnick could play a leading role in implementing the president’s economic and trade policies.
Trump has proposed widespread increases in tariffs on imported goods, an effort to boost American manufacturing of the same products, but one that in the near term threatens to increase prices for American consumers and disrupt the global economy.
The Commerce Department oversees an array of federal business policies, including on semiconductors, cybersecurity and patents, and helps promote new businesses and economic growth in the United States, the world’s biggest economy.
Lutnick has donated to both Democrats and Republicans in the past. He also once appeared on Trump’s NBC reality TV show “The Apprentice” before Trump was first elected president in 2016.
The Cantor Fitzgerald firm that Lutnick heads lost more employees — 658 out of 960 — than any other business in the September 11, 2001, al-Qaida terrorist attack on the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York. Another 46 contractors and visitors who were in the Cantor Fitzgerald offices that day were killed when the towers collapsed.
Lutnick’s brother Gary was among those killed when hijackers flew commercial jetliners into the skyscrapers, hitting the North Tower just below where Cantor Fitzgerald occupied floors 101 to 105. Howard Lutnick would have been there as well but was taking his son Kyle to his first day of kindergarten.
Back at the site, Howard Lutnick survived the collapse of the South Tower by taking cover under a nearby car. He later created the Cantor Fitzgerald Relief Fund to assist families of victims of the attacks and natural disasters.
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