Trump Picks Howard Lutnick as Commerce Secretary

Donald Trump will nominate the veteran Wall Street financier Howard Lutnick to lead the Commerce Department, elevating one of the financial world’s most vocal supporters of Trump to a crucial position overseeing the incoming administration’s aggressive trade agenda. Lutnick, chief executive officer of the financial-services firm Cantor Fitzgerald, has become a close Trump ally and had been a top contender to lead the Treasury Department. As the co-chair of the president-elect’s transition team, Lutnick has spent much of his time at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private Florida club, poring over shortlists of candidates for positions in the administration. Trump signaled that Lutnick would have expansive authority over his trade agenda, announcing that his nominee would have “direct responsibility” over the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. The office currently exists as a separate entity from Commerce. USTR is historically a cabinet-level job that reports directly to the president. Trump’s transition team didn’t immediately respond to a request for clarity on Lutnick’s portfolio. Lutnick has fiercely defended Trump’s economic proposals in the face of opposition from some on Wall Street, who worry that the president-elect’s pledge to impose sweeping tariffs will trigger trade wars and ultimately lead to higher prices for American consumers. Lutnick would join a long line of commerce secretaries who have been chosen from among a president’s biggest donors. But the Commerce Department — which has an $11 billion budget and roughly 51,000 workers — has grown in importance in its own right in recent years. The agency is the nation’s primary advocate for the commercial interests of U.S. businesses globally. However, it also oversees an increasingly important system of technology restrictions, which bar exports of certain technology, including semiconductors, to China, Russia and elsewhere, for national security reasons. It is also charged with dispensing tens of billions of dollars of subsidies to U.S. chip manufacturers under the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, and regulating artificial intelligence. Because of this, it is considered one of the most critical parts of the government in determining whether China or the United States will dominate industries of the future. Lutnick will also inherit an effort by the Biden administration to provide broadband internet access to at least 6.25 million households and locations across the country by 2025.