Senate confirms Howard Lutnick as commerce secretary
The Senate confirmed billionaire Howard Lutnick as commerce secretary on Tuesday, in a 51-45 vote.
In his new role, the finance mogul will advise President Donald Trump on economic growth and job creation and will be tasked with carrying out one of the president's favorite economic power plays: tariffs. Lutnick has expressed support for the sweeping tariffs proposed by Trump during the campaign.
The Commerce Department is the nation's economic development agency. It governs trademarks and intellectual property, fosters research on emerging technologies, oversees ocean and coastal navigation and helps negotiate trade agreements, among other things.
Lutnick, 63, was a key player during Trump's political transition, working to help fill some 4,000 political positions in the federal government. In his profile on the social media site X, Lutnick describes himself as a "founding member" of billionaire Elon Musk's controversial Department of Government Efficiency.
Born in Jericho, New York, to a Jewish family, Lutnick was orphaned by the time he was a freshman at Haverford College in Pennsylvania, where he studied economics. Both his parents died of cancer – one year apart, according to New York Magazine.
Lutnick joined financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald after graduating college in 1983 and climbed rapidly through the ranks to lead the company as CEO in 1996.
The company’s offices at One World Trade Center were destroyed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack. Lutnick survived because he was en route to drop his son off at school when the planes struck.
But the attack killed 658 of Lutnick's employees, including his 36-year-old brother, Gary. For five years afterward, the company dedicated a quarter of its profits to the families of employees who were killed and paid for their health insurance for a decade.
To date, according to the company website, Cantor Fitzgerald has given $180 million to families of the victims.
After being tapped for commerce secretary, Lutnick said he would step down from his role at Cantor and two related companies he led, global brokerage BGC Group Inc. and commercial real estate firm Newmark Group Inc.
Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy and Michael Collins contributed.