The Senate confirmed rich financier Howard Lutnick as commerce secretary Tuesday, putting in a staunch supporter of President Trump’s hardline commerce insurance policies.
On the Commerce Division, Lutnick, who was CEO on the funding agency Cantor Fitzgerald, will oversee 50,000 workers who do all the things from accumulating financial statistics to working the census to issuing climate experiences. However he is seemingly to spend so much of time — together with Jamieson Greer, Mr. Trump’s nominee to be the highest U.S. commerce negotiator — managing the president’s aggressive plans to impose import taxes on U.S. buying and selling companions, together with allies and adversaries alike.
The Senate vote to verify Lutnick was 51-45.
Mr. Trump views the tariffs as a flexible financial software. They’ll increase cash to finance his tax cuts elsewhere, defend U.S. industries and strain different international locations into making concessions on such points as their very own commerce boundaries, immigration and drug trafficking. Mainstream economists principally view tariffs as counterproductive: They’re paid by import firms in america, which attempt to go alongside the upper prices to customers and may thereby add to inflationary pressures all through the financial system.
At his affirmation listening to final month, Lutnick dismissed as “nonsense” the concept tariffs contribute to inflation. He expressed assist for deploying across-the-board tariffs “nation by nation” to strong-arm different international locations into reducing boundaries to American exports.
Mr. Trump final week introduced plans for “reciprocal” tariffs — elevating U.S. import tax charges to match the upper taxes that different international locations impose on items from the U.S. The transfer would shatter the foundations which have ruled world commerce for many years. Because the Nineteen Sixties, tariff charges have principally emerged from negotiations between dozens of nations. Mr. Trump is commandeering the method.
The president has additionally imposed 10% tariffs on Chinese language imports and successfully raised U.S. taxes on international metal and aluminum. He has threatened — and delayed till March 4 — 25% tariffs on items from Canada and Mexico.
Lutnick was CEO at Cantor Fitzgerald when its places of work had been hit within the Sept. 11, 2001, assault on the World Commerce Heart. The agency misplaced two-thirds of its workers — 658 folks — that day, together with Lutnick’s brother. Howard Lutnick led the agency’s restoration and is a member of the Board of Administrators of the Nationwide September 11 Memorial & Museum.
Lutnick has promised to unload his enterprise holdings. They’re sophisticated. His monetary disclosure assertion confirmed that he had positions in additional than 800 companies and different personal organizations.
