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Howard Lutnick, a Long Island native from Jericho and the chairman and CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, is his pick for commerce secretary.
“He will lead our tariff and trade agenda, with additional direct responsibility for the Office of the United States Trade Representative,” Trump announced on Truth Social on Tuesday, Nov. 19.
Lutnick, a co-chair of the president-elect’s transition team, has spent four decades on Wall Street, having joined Cantor Fitzgerald in 1983. After rapidly rising through the ranks, he became president and CEO at the age of 29.
He was one of just 302 employees who survived the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, which killed 658 of Cantor’s employees, including his brother. Lutnick would have been at his office in the North Tower of the World Trade Center that morning, but was taking his son to his first day of kindergarten.
“He emerged from these events with an indomitable sense of purpose to rebuild the firm to honor those lost, support their families, and become a beacon of hope for those who remained,” Trump said. “He was an inspiration to the world – the embodiment of resilience in the face of unspeakable tragedy.”
Lutnick served on the boards of directors of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum and of Weill Cornell Medicine. He was named the Financial Times’ Person of the Year in 2001 and Ernst & Young’s United States Entrepreneur of the Year in 2010.
The US secretary of commerce serves as principal adviser to the president on all matters relating to commerce, and is tasked with promoting American businesses and industries.
Trump has already named several New Yorkers to senior positions, picking one of his strongest allies in Congress, Elise Stefanik, to serve as United States ambassador to the United Nations and a former member of his first administration, Tom Homan, as border czar.
He also picked Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a well-known vaccine-skeptic, for secretary of health and human services, and former congressman and gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
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