Billionaire financier Howard Lutnick was nominated by Donald Trump to become the powerful Secretary of Commerce.
Lutnick, 63, the co-chair of Trump’s transition team, is expected to take the powerful Cabinet position that will be in charge of enacting the president-elect’s sweeping tariff reforms.
Like Trump, Lutnick is originally from the New York area and he serves as the CEO of a multibillion-dollar organization Cantor Fitzgerald and BCG Group.
Lutnick is expected to step back from those roles to focus solely on Commerce.
He has been a staunch Trump ally and even spoke at the Republican’s infamous Madison Square Garden rally in the heart of Manhattan days before the November 5 election.
That rally earned widespread condemnation after a comedian joked that Puerto Rico was an island of trash, a comment many critics decried as racist.
Lutnick has a long and tragic history with the Big Apple. The firm he runs Cantor Fitzgerald had hundreds of employees die as a result of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Trump confirmed in an announcement Wednesday afternoon that Lutnick accepted the role.
‘I am thrilled to announce that Howard Lutnick, Chairman & CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, will join my Administration as the United States Secretary of Commerce,’ the president-elect wrote. ‘He will lead our Tariff and Trade agenda, with additional direct responsibility for the Office of the United States Trade Representative.’
‘In his role as Co-Chair of the Trump-Vance Transition Team, Howard has created the most sophisticated process and system to assist us in creating the greatest Administration America has ever seen.’
The financial firm’s offices were in the World Trade Center when the planes hit decades ago.
Lutnick lost his brother in the attacks and has since organized annual fundraisers for the victims of the attacks.
Over the weekend, X owner Elon Musk posted on his platform that he was in support of Lutnick being nominated to Trump’s Cabient, but not for Commerce secretary.
Musk said that Lutnick should be considered to run the Treasury Department.
The Tesla CEO also notably threw another man vying for the role, Scott Bessent, under the bus publicly in his post.
‘Would be interesting to hear more people weigh in on this for [Trump] to consider feedback,’ Musk’s post began.
‘My view [for what it’s worth] is that Bessent is a business-as-usual choice, whereas [Lutnick] will actually enact change.’
‘Business-as-usual is driving America bankrupt, so we need change one way or another.’
He was not the only Trump ally who came out swinging for Lutnick.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also went to bat for the New York financier.
‘Bitcoin is the currency of freedom, a hedge against inflation for middle class Americans, a remedy against the dollar’s downgrade from the world’s reserve currency, and the offramp from a ruinous national debt. Bitcoin will have no stronger advocate than Howard Lutnick,’ he wrote on X Saturday.
The financial baron was reportedly angling for the top job at the Treasury Department, but reports indicate that his aggressive positioning for that role irked Trump.
