Howard Lutnick, Trump's transition co-chair, is his pick to lead Commerce Department
President-elect Donald Trump said Tuesday he will nominate Howard Lutnick, a Wall Street billionaire and a top Trump ally who is heading his transition team, to serve as commerce secretary.
If confirmed by the Senate, Lutnick, the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, would take over a high-level Cabinet position charged with advising the president on matters related to job creation and economic growth.
In a statement posted to social media, Trump said Lutnick would lead his tariff and trade agenda, campaign promises that were central in his reelection bid.
Lutnick, 63, has already been working alongside Trump transition team co-chair Linda McMahon to help the incoming president prepare to fill some 4,000 political positions in the federal government.
Born in Jericho, New York, to a Jewish family, Lutnick was orphaned by the time he was a freshman at Haverford College in Pennsylvania. Both his parents died of cancer – one year apart, according to New York Magazine.
Lutnick joined Cantor Fitzgerald after graduating college in 1983 and rose to president and CEO in 1996. The company’s offices, which were located in One World Trade Center, were destroyed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The attack killed 658 of Lutnick's employees, including his 36-year-old brother, Gary.
For five years, the company paid a quarter of its profits to the families of employees who were killed and paid for their health insurance for 10 years. To date, the company has given $180 million to families of the victims.
A longtime friend of Trump’s, Lutnick has said he agrees with the president-elect’s policies on immigration, cryptocurrency and tariffs on imported goods. He said he agreed to take a more active role in Trump’s campaign after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which killed 1,200 people and the abduction of more than 250 hostages.
“He (Trump) had clear, moral clarity when it came to Israel and what happened,” Lutnick told The Philadelphia Inquirer in October. “That was huge to me.”
In a speech during Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally in October, Lutnick urged the Republican presidential candidate's supports to vote for Trump "because we must crush Jihad.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Donald Trump selects Howard Lutnick for commerce secretary