WASHINGTON – Billionaire financier Howard Lutnick, President Donald Trump’s choice to lead the Commerce Department, said Wednesday that he would sell all of his business holdings within 90 days.
“I will divest, I will sell all of my interests, my business interests, all of my assets, everything,” Lutnick said in a confirmation hearing Wednesday before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. ”I made the decision I’ve made enough money in my life.”
Lutnick, head of the investment firm Cantor Fitzgerald, has complicated business dealings. His financial disclosure statement showed that he had positions in more than 800 businesses and other private organizations.
Lutnick was introduced by Vice President JD Vance, who called him “just a good dude.”
Lutnick, who was head of the investment firm Cantor Fitzgerald, has emerged as an outspoken supporter of Trump’s hardline trade policies.
Trump has threatened new tariffs on China and an across-the-board levy on everything imported into the United States.
He is also planning to impose 25% import taxes — tariffs — Saturday on America’s two biggest trading partners, Canada and Mexico. Lutnick suggested Wednesday that the tariffs on Canada and Mexico could be avoided if they complied with Trump’s demand to stop the flow of undocumented immigrants and fentanyl into the United States.
Lutnick expressed support Wednesday for using across-the-board import taxes “country by country” to strong-arm trade partners into lowering their tariffs on U.S. exports. ”Tariffs are a way to create reciprocity,” he said.
Lutnick also dismissed as ”nonsense” the view of many economists that tariffs cause inflation, arguing that China and India have high import taxes but low inflation. (The International Monetary Fund forecasts 1.7% inflation in China, 4.1% in India and 1.9% in the United States this year.)
Lutnick was in the running to be Treasury secretary, but Trump decided to go with someone viewed as more palatable to Wall Street: wealthy investor Scott Bessent, who was confirmed by the Senate Monday. Elon Musk had backed Lutnick, publicly dismissing Bessent as “a business-as-usual” choice.
The Commerce Department is a sprawling bureaucracy with nearly 50,000 employees. A voice for business in the federal government, it administers trade policy, collects economic statistics, oversees government funding of new computer chip factories, runs the census, grants patents and issues weather reports, among other things.
As Commerce Secretary, Lutnick will work with Trump’s nominee to be U.S. trade representative, Jamieson Greer, to lead the president’s promised tariff onslaught.
Lutnick was CEO at Cantor Fitzgerald when its offices were hit in the Sept. 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center. The firm lost two-thirds of its employees — 658 people — that day, including Lutnick’s brother, Gary Lutnick. Lutnick is a member of the Board of Directors of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum.
Speaking about 9/11 Wednesday, Lutnick choked up. “I still can’t say it without getting emotional,” he said.
Lutnick, who once appeared on Trump’s reality television show “The Apprentice,” is a big supporter of cryptocurrencies, digital money that can be traded over the internet outside the highly regulated banking system. Bitcoin is the most popular cryptocurrency. Lutnick last year launched a cryptocurrency platform called World Liberty Financial with members of his family.
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