Trump to name Howard Lutnick to lead Commerce Department

Donald Trump is expected to name investor Howard Lutnick, the co-chair of his transition team, to lead the US commerce department, according to CBS News, the BBC’s US partner.

If confirmed, Lutnick would oversee a department that helps boost domestic manufacturing and US companies.

It is often a key player in areas where business and national security interests collide, such as restricting technology exports to China or enacting tariffs to protect US steel.

Lutnick, the chief executive of financial firm Cantor Fitzgerald, had also been in the running for treasury secretary, a more high-profile role.

Trump has yet to make a decision about that post, which has sweeping authority in areas such as economic and tax policy.

The fight has spilled into public view, with advisers such as billionaire Elon Musk promoting Lutnick for the position and criticising one of the alternative candidates, Scott Bessent, as too “business as usual”.

Commerce is smaller than the treasury department, with a workforce of about 50,000 people. Beyond its role in the US-China trade and tech war, its responsibilities include patent approvals, publishing economic data, and conducting the US census.

Lutnick, a native of Long Island, New York, is a long-time Republican and supporter of Trump, with whom he overlapped in the New York social scene.

He has explained his support for the president-elect by describing himself as a “strong capitalist” and saying Trump has a “competitive growth model”.

During the campaign, he served as a spokesman for some of Trump’s most radical plans, including wide-ranging tariffs and the elimination of the income tax.

His embrace of those views put him out of step with some on Wall Street, which has historically seen tariffs as bad for corporate America.

Lutnick joined Cantor Fitzgerald right after his 1983 graduation from Haverford College, which he attended on scholarship. He lost both of his parents as a teenager – his mother to cancer and his father to a medical mistake.

Within 10 years, he rose to be president and chief executive of the firm. It is known today in part for its investments in crypto and its affiliate in the property industry, the Newmark brokerage.

Lutnick’s public profile rose after the September 11 attacks, which killed more than 600 people working in the company’s offices that morning, including his brother. He was not at work because he was taking one of his children to kindergarten.

Lutnick, who speaks with a New York accent and is known for his blustery style, wept on TV in the days after.

Twenty years later, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, he said the day was a dividing line in his life, “before 9/11 and after” and for years following “it was still so raw it felt like yesterday”.