Trump will nominate transition adviser and billionaire Howard Lutnick for commerce secretary

President-elect Donald Trump says he’ll nominate Howard Lutnick, head of brokerage and investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald, to be commerce secretary, a position in which he’d have a key role in carrying out Trump’s plans to raise and enforce tariffs.
Trump announced his pick Tuesday in a social media post.
Lutnick is a co-chair of Trump’s transition team, along with Linda McMahon, the former wrestling executive who was the Small Business Administration administrator in Trump’s first administration. Both are tasked with putting forward candidates for key roles in the next administration.
File: Howard Lutnick, Chairman and CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald and Co-Chair of the Trump 2024 Transition Team speaks at a rally for former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at Madison Square Garden in New York, October 27, 2024. ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images
Lutnick has also donated millions to the effort to re-elect Trump and other Republicans. He hosted a fundraiser for Trump in August that raised $15 million and also gave $5 million to the Make America Great Again PAC, according to Federal Election Commission records.
As commerce secretary, Lutnick, if confirmed, would be in charge of a sprawling Cabinet agency that is involved in funding new computer chip factories, imposing trade restrictions, releasing economic data and monitoring the weather. It is also a position in which connections to CEOs and the wider business community are crucial.
An advocate for imposing wide-ranging tariffs, Lutnick told CNBC in September that