Donald Trump plans to nominate Wall Street billionaire Howard Lutnick to lead the Commerce Department, the president-elect announced in a Truth Social post on Tuesday.
Investment bank CEO Cantor Fitzgerald will lead the incoming administration’s tariff and trade agenda, which Trump has made a key policy priority for next year. Lutnick, a longtime Trump loyalist, served as co-chair of the president-elect’s transition team.
Trump emphasized in his announcement that Lutnick will have “additional direct responsibility for the Office of the United States Trade Representative.”
The Commerce secretary will be tasked with keeping Trump’s promises of 60% tariffs on goods from China and up to 20% on all other imports.
Trump’s criticism of federal subsidies could impact some of President Biden’s key manufacturing policies, such as CHIPS and Science Act of 2022.
Lutnick expressed support for Trump’s wide-ranging tariffs during the campaign.
“Which one is it? Do we make a lot of money on tariffs or do we bring productivity here and grow our workers here? It’s a win-win scenario. I like both. I think what’s going to happen is we’re going to make a lot of money on tariffs, but mostly everyone else is going to negotiate with us and we’re going to be honest,” Lutnick said during an interview with CNBC in September.
On clean energy, Lutnick supports opening up US lithium reserves as a way to produce low-cost onshore batteries. The high price of producing batteries and electric vehicles has been an obstacle for companies trying to scale domestic production.
Lutnick also expressed a desire to cut government spending.
“How much do you think we can wring out of this wasted $6.5 trillion Harris-Biden budget?” Lutnick asked Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk on stage at a Madison Square Garden rally last month. When Musk responded with an estimate of “at least $2 trillion,” Lutnick enthusiastically replied, “Yes!”
Musk has been tasked with running the new unofficial government entity, the Department of Government Efficiency, which aims to cut government spending.
Lutnick’s appointment follows Trump’s first-term trend of placing Wall Street executives in charge of major agencies. In 2016, Trump tapped former private equity firm WL Ross & Co. CEO Wilbur Ross to be his commerce secretary.