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What to know about Howard Lutnick, Trump's pick for commerce secretary

[November 20, 2024] By FATIMA HUSSEIN

WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Howard Lutnick, head of brokerage and investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald and cryptocurrency enthusiast, as his nominee for commerce secretary.

The nomination would put Lutnick in charge of a sprawling Cabinet agency that is involved in funding new computer chip factories, imposing trade restrictions, releasing economic data and monitoring the weather. It is also a position in which connections to CEOs and the wider business community are crucial.

Lutnick, a co-chair of Trump’s transition team, along with Linda McMahon, the former wrestling executive who previously led Trump’s Small Business Administration, once appeared on Trump’s NBC reality show, “The Apprentice." He has become a part of the president-elect’s inner circle.

Here are things to know about the billionaire who, if confirmed by the Senate, will lead the Commerce Department.

He was Elon Musk’s pick to lead the Treasury Department
Elon Musk and others in Trump’s orbit called on Trump last week to dump previous front-runner for treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, in favor of Lutnick. Musk said in a post that “Bessent is a business-as-usual choice, whereas @howardlutnick will actually enact change.”

The treasury role has been at the center of an unusual high-profile jockeying within the Trump world. At the same time, the position is closely watched in financial circles, where a disruptive nominee could have immediate negative consequences on the stock market, which Trump watches closely. Trump has yet to decide on one of the top remaining vacancies in his proposed cabinet.

The major remaining nominees for the role are Bessent, former Federal Reserve board governor Kevin Warsh, Apollo Global Management Chief Executive Marc Rowan, and Tennessee Sen. Bill Hagerty, Trump's former Japan ambassador.

He is a major supporter of Trump's tariffs plan
Trump on the campaign trail proposed a 60% tariff on goods from China — and a tariff of up to 20% on everything else the United States imports. On the campaign trail, Trump portrayed the taxes on imports as both a negotiating tool to hammer out better trade terms and as a way to generate revenue to fund tax cuts elsewhere.

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An advocate for imposing wide-ranging tariffs, Lutnick gave full-throated support for Trump's tariffs plan in a CNBC interview in September. “Tariffs are an amazing tool for the president to use — we need to protect the American worker," he said.

Mainstream economists are generally skeptical of tariffs, considering them a mostly inefficient way for governments to raise money and promote prosperity.

His brother and hundreds of Cantor employees were killed in the September 11th terrorist attacks
Lutnick's brother, Gary Lutnick, and 658 of 960 Cantor Fitzgerald employees were killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center. The firm lost two-thirds of its employees that day. Lutnick is a member of the Board of Directors of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, the Partnership for New York City.

After Cantor Fitzgerald settled a wrongful death and personal injuries case against American Airlines and insurance carriers in 2013 for $135 million, Lutnick said: “We could never, and will never, consider it ordinary. For us, there is no way to describe this compromise with inapt words like ordinary, fair or reasonable. All we can say is that the legal formality of this matter is over.”

Trump's Tuesday announcement on the Commerce Department nomination mentioned Lutnick's loss — stating he was “the embodiment of resilience in the face of unspeakable tragedy.”

He's a major supporter of cryptocurrency
Lutnick is a proponent of advancing aims of the cryptocurrency industry — namely, the cryptocurrency Tether.

Cryptocurrencies are forms of digital money that can be traded over the internet without relying on the global banking system. Bitcoin is the most popular cryptocurrency.

“Bitcoin is like gold and should be free trade everywhere in the world,” Lutnick said at a bitcoin conference earlier this year. “And as the largest wholesaler in the world we’re going to do everything in our power to make it so. Bitcoin should trade the same as gold everywhere in the world without exception and without limitation.”

Trump has taken on a favorable view of cryptocurrencies — from announcing in May that the campaign would begin accepting donations in cryptocurrency as part of an effort to build what it calls a “crypto army” leading up to Election Day. He has also launched a cryptocurrency platform called World Liberty Financial with members of his family earlier this year.

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