President-elect Donald Trump announced Tuesday he plans to appoint Cantor Fitzgerald President and CEO Howard Lutnick to lead the U.S. Commerce Department, as the incoming administration is expected to charge import tariffs against friends and foes.
Trump announced the pick on his social media platform Truth Social, stating that Lutnick will lead the Commerce Department’s tariff and trade agenda, along with having direct responsibility for the Office of the United States Trade Agenda.
Lutnick, who started at financial services giant Cantor Fitzgerald in 1983 and quickly climbed the ladder to become president and CEO at the age of 29, has been a longtime supporter of Trump. Lutnick is also a staunch supporter of the president-elect’s agenda on tariffs and the deregulation of cryptocurrency.
In a July interview with CNBC, Lutnick played down worries about tariffs affecting growth, arguing that Trump’s tough talk is more a negotiating tactic.
“The president is a dealmaker. He wants to make a deal with China,” Lutnick said. “He’s going to start tough, then make a deal. He cares about business in America, he cares about regulation. I think people forget, for every one regulation, you get rid of two. Remember that mantra? I think that’s coming back.”
Mark Quinn, director of regulatory affairs at Cetera Financial Group, said the problem with tariffs is they move from ”being an economic issue to being a geopolitical issue.”
“Tariffs in general are an inefficient way to bring about economic outcomes,” Quinn said. “Where it gets more interesting is where you start to talk about tariffs with countries that otherwise are allies like Mexico and Japan.”
Ultimately, Quinn said, like President Joe Biden’s move to block the U.S. Steel sale to Japan’s Nippon Steel, protecting U.S. industry and workers is the goal and “whether you think it’s an efficient method or not, tariffs are one way to do that.”
In July, Lutnick delivered a keynote speech at Bitcoin 2024 in Nashville, Tenn., arguing for deregulating stablecoin cryptocurrencies like Tether, which he claimed has “no limits on redemptions on approved primary customers, meaning they’re KYC’d (Know Your Customer).”
“Bitcoin is like gold and should be free trade everywhere in the world,” Lutnick said. “Bitcoin should trade the same as gold everywhere in the world without exception and without limitation.”
Trump ally Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyoming) has taken this idea even further by proposing the Bitcoin Act of 2024, which would create a national Bitcoin reserve using Federal Reserve gold.
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