The Senate on Tuesday voted 51 to 45 to confirm Howard Lutnick to be President Trump’s commerce secretary, putting in place one of the administration’s top economic officials who will help oversee an agenda around tariffs and protectionism.
Mr. Lutnick, who was the chief executive of the financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald, became a central economic adviser to Mr. Trump over the past year and led his transition team. He has defended tariffs as a tool to protect U.S. industries from international competition, promoted lower corporate taxes and called for an expansion of energy production.
As commerce secretary, Mr. Lutnick will take on a broad portfolio that includes defending U.S. business interests worldwide and overseeing restrictions on technology exports to countries like China.
At his confirmation hearing last month, Mr. Lutnick said he would take a tough stance on the department’s oversight of technology sales to China and back up U.S. export controls with the threat of tariffs. He said the recent artificial intelligence technology released by the Chinese start-up DeepSeek had been underpinned by Meta’s open platform and chips sold by the U.S. company Nvidia.
“We need to stop helping them,” Mr. Lutnick said of China, adding, “I’m going to be very strong on that.”
As the United States resumes economic negotiations with the country, Mr. Lutnick is expected to play a central role. Mr. Trump said the new commerce secretary would oversee the work of the Office of the United States Trade Representative, which is traditionally the hub of trade policy.
Mr. Lutnick will assume that responsibility as Mr. Trump has already taken steps to upend the global trading system. The president has threatened tariffs on Canada and Mexico, imposed tariffs on China and initiated a process to begin imposing so-called reciprocal tariffs on all U.S. trading partners. The Commerce Department will work with other federal agencies to determine tariff rates for other countries.
Mr. Lutnick will also be responsible for overseeing and potentially overhauling programs that were top priorities for the Biden administration. Those include subsidies to U.S. chip manufacturers under the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act and an effort to provide broadband internet access to at least 6.25 million households and locations across the country.
Mr. Lutnick, who is a wealthy investor, has a network of ties that could raise concerns about potential conflicts of interest as he leads the way on government policies that could significantly affect businesses and markets, potentially enriching former customers or partners.
For instance, he has financial interests in the mining industry in Greenland through Cantor Fitzgerald. Cantor has invested in Critical Metals, a company that has proposed mining metals and minerals in Greenland as soon as 2026. Mr. Trump has repeatedly proposed purchasing Greenland, which is an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Demark.
A financial disclosure filing that Mr. Lutnick submitted last month showed executive positions he has held or holds in more than 800 individual firms. It also revealed that he received more than $350 million in income, distributions and bonuses in the past two years from his network of financial services and real estate firms.
Mr. Lutnick, who worked on Wall Street for decades, gained national attention when many of the employees at Cantor Fitzgerald, the brokerage firm where he was the president and chief executive, died in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.
