Howard Lutnick: Trump’s commerce secretary pick survived 9/11 because of school run

The 63-year-old comes to his new department with Wall Street experience, and a lifetime of tragedy on his shoulders

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When the planes hit the World Trade Center on Sep 11, 2001, Howard Lutnick was dropping his son off for his first day at kindergarten.
On any other day at the same time, he would have been at the offices of Cantor Fitzgerald, the major financial firm he ran on five floors of the North Tower.
But that day, he found out what had happened there from a school administrator, who told him: “Your office is looking for you. A plane has hit the building.”
By the time he reached the site of the attack, the South Tower was on the edge of collapse, and he ran to take shelter.
Mr Lutnick lost 658 of his 960 New York employees – the most of any business or government agency. One of them was his own brother.
Twenty-three years on, he has been nominated by Donald Trump to become Commerce Secretary – one of the most important business officials in the world – after playing a key role in the transition team vetting and hiring appointees to Trump’s second administration.
Mr Lutnick’s politics blends his bullish Wall Street instincts with the new protectionism of the “America First” agenda. Like Mr Trump, he sees the world of trade as a balance that is currently tipped in America’s adversaries’ favour, and he supports aggressive expansion of fossil fuels. And, like most Republicans, he thinks taxes are too high.
He had been tipped to be Mr Trump’s treasury secretary, a more senior role, but reportedly fell out of favour after pushing the president-elect too hard for the job.
As commerce secretary, he will be responsible for supporting American businesses at home and abroad.
In a statement announcing Mr Lutnick would be commerce secretary, Mr Trump said he would have “direct responsibility” for the US trade representative’s office to “lead our tariff and trade agenda”.
“In his role as co-chair of the Trump-Vance Transition Team, Howard has created the most sophisticated process and system to assist us in creating the greatest administration America has ever seen,” he added.
Mr Lutnick’s rise to the top of Washington politics after a successful career in the business world is testament to his remarkable resilience.
Born to a Jewish history professor and artist in Jericho, New York, Mr Lutnick experienced tragedy young, when his mother died of lymphoma while he was in his senior year of high school.
A year later, in his freshman year of a liberal arts degree at Haverford College in Pennsylvania, his father was also diagnosed with cancer. He died after a nurse accidentally administered him chemotherapy drugs at 100 times the intended dose.
The university’s dean offered him all four years of his education for free – a gesture he has never forgotten.
“They took a bet on me. Not a bet on me when I was Howard Lutnick, and I was a rock star. It was when I was 18 years old,” he told a university alumni event in 2015.
Now worth more than $1.5 billion, and one of the most successful men on Wall Street, Mr Lutnick has become the biggest donor in the school’s history.
He describes a liberal arts education as a “beautiful quest” to “educate the whole being,” and had given $65 million of his fortune to allow others to do the same.
This week, the business world’s eyes will not be on the 63-year-old’s life story, but his views on the global economy.
“Me, Elon Musk and Trump are going to figure it out,” he told a podcaster in the days before Nov 5, when Mr Trump won a clean sweep across the nation to take back the White House.
He was referring to the federal deficit, which both Mr Trump and Mr Musk have pledged to tackle after they take office. Sceptics point out that the deficit increased rapidly during Mr Trump’s first term.
Mr Lutnick has also called for “balanced” tariffs, becoming a rare Wall Street backer of Mr Trump’s unorthodox idea to impose protectionist trade policy across the entire US economy, and on all trading partners.
He will be directly responsible for tariff policy at the Commerce Department, and is expected to feed into Mr Trump’s economic policy more broadly. Mr Trump’s treasury secretary is yet to be announced.
In the Trump-Lutnick telling of US economic history, the government’s tax-raising strategy has gone downhill since the 19th century, when almost all federal income was generated by tariffs.
By imposing rates of 10-20 per cent on all countries, and at least 60 per cent on China, the pair hope to cut income tax rates for Americans. Critics argue that the plan will drive inflation.
Mr Lutnick has also supported Mr Trump’s idea for oil drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, an area fiercely protected from exploitation by Joe Biden. Mr Lutnick has called for it to be part of plans to “drill, baby, drill” after Jan 20.
His influence was built partly through his contacts, which have been liberally shared with Mr Trump in the hunt for future Treasury officials, sources told Reuters.
But he also has a longstanding relationship with the president-elect, who offered to help him rebuild Cantor Fitzgerald after the events of 9/11. He repaid the favour with political support.
Mr Lutnick’s loyalty through the years has paid off. After becoming one of Mr Trump’s right-hand men on the campaign trail this year – and a star of his Madison Square Garden rally – he has remained close to the president-elect after election day.
As a co-chairman of Mr Trump’s presidential transition team, he has amassed influence in the chaotic and impermeable court of Mar-a-Lago, and will take up his new position in January if his nomination is confirmed by the US Senate.
His nomination, unlike many of the list of names in Mr Trump’s proposed Cabinet, is not especially controversial. In other words, he has not repeated Russian conspiracy theories or been accused of having sex with a 17-year-old girl.
Mr Lutnick instead comes to the Department of Commerce with Wall Street experience, and a lifetime of tragedy on his shoulders.
“He hears me,” he told the podcaster Anthony Pompliano of Mr Trump recently. “He doesn’t always listen to what I say. He didn’t always do what I say. But he hears me.”
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