Senate confirms Howard Lutnick as commerce secretary, a key role for Trump's trade agenda
Get Starting Point
A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday.
Enter Email
Sign Up
At his confirmation hearing last month, Lutnick dismissed as 'nonsense'' the idea that tariffs contribute to inflation. He expressed support for deploying across-the-board tariffs 'country by country'' to strong-arm other countries into lowering barriers to American exports.
Advertisement
Trump last week announced plans for 'reciprocal'' tariffs — raising US import tax rates to match the higher taxes that other countries impose on goods from the US. The move would shatter the rules that have governed world trade for decades. Since the 1960s, tariff rates have mostly emerged from negotiations between dozens of countries. Trump is commandeering the process.
The president has also imposed 10% tariffs on Chinese imports and effectively raised US taxes on foreign steel and aluminum. He has threatened — and delayed until March 4 — 25% tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico.
Lutnick was CEO at Cantor Fitzgerald when its offices were hit in the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center. The firm lost two-thirds of its employees — 658 people — that day, including Lutnick's brother. Howard Lutnick led the firm's recovery and is a member of the Board of Directors of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum.
Advertisement
Lutnick has promised to sell off his business holdings. They're complicated. His financial disclosure statement showed that he had positions in more than 800 businesses and other private organizations.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Fox News
a few seconds ago
- Fox News
CNN panel knocks 'look at the statistics' response from national Democrats on Trump's crime plan
A CNN panel suggested Monday that the "look at the statistics" response from some national Democrats on President Trump's crime plan might come across as "tone-deaf."
Epoch Times
a minute ago
- Epoch Times
Unlearning the Factory Mindset: How Education Must Evolve for the AI Era
AD Oleksii Pydsosonnii/The Epoch Times 8/12/2025 | Updated: 8/12/2025 We are at the start of a new industrial revolution, yet we still think with factory minds forged in the last revolution. Kay Rubacek is an award-winning filmmaker, author, speaker, and former host of NTD's 'Life & Times.' After being detained in a Chinese prison for advocating for human rights, she has dedicated her work to facing communist and socialist regimes in their modern, global forms. She has also contributed to The Epoch Times since 2010. Author's Selected Articles
Fox News
28 minutes ago
- Fox News
Trump's earliest supporter announces bid for Alabama Senate seat
FIRST ON FOX: Another House Republican has their eyes set on a Senate seat in the 2026 midterms. Rep. Barry Moore, R-Ala., told Fox News Digital in an interview that he plans to run for Sen. Tommy Tuberville's seat in the upper chamber. Moore, who has represented the southern Alabama 1st congressional district since 2021, styled himself as a fiscal hawk with a longstanding history of supporting President Donald Trump. Indeed, he was the first elected official in the country to endorse Trump during his first run for office in 2015. "I think my number one job is to protect the people's liberty and to support the president in that process," Moore said. "And so, for us, it's an opportunity to continue to fight for the America First agenda, and also make sure we have conservatives in the Senate from Alabama that are truly the voice of the people." And one of his top concerns in Washington is the ever-increasing national debt, which has neared $37 trillion and counting, according to the Fox Business National Debt Tracker. One of his top priorities when helping to craft Trump's "big, beautiful bill" was to apply downward pressure on Congress' spending habits to achieve roughly $1.5 trillion in spending cuts over the next decade. "I think that we'll have to hold the line on spending," Moore said. "But again, this didn't get this way overnight. You're not going to fix it overnight. So you have to do it gradually." Moore, 58, is not alone in the race to replace Tuberville, who earlier this year announced that he would make a bid for the governor's mansion after serving only one term in the upper chamber. He joins Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall and former Navy SEAL Jared Hudson in the Republican primary. There are also a trio of candidates running on the Democratic side, including Kyle Sweetser, Dakarai Larriett and Mark Wheeler II. And despite his conservative bona fides — he is a member of the House Freedom Caucus and touted his deeply conservative voting record — Moore believed that the number one issue in the Senate, and Congress in general, is the growing partisan divide. He noted that when he came to Washington in 2021, he was disappointed that Republicans and Democrats didn't work together more in the lower chamber under former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. "I think most people in D.C. are principled," he said. "They're trying to do the right thing. There's perfect, and that's sometimes the enemy of practical. And so we try to make sure that even on the 'big, beautiful bill,' it wasn't perfect. There were 435 versions of perfect in the House, but having principled people come to the table and say, 'Let's get a practical solution so we can get wins for this administration and for our country' – I think that's what we have to do in the Senate." "I don't think we have to look at the opposing side as the enemy always," he said. "And I think we have to keep in mind, too, that they represent areas, and they have a different experience in life." Still, despite his desire to create bipartisan inroads in the upper chamber, which is a must in most legislative fights, given the 60-vote filibuster threshold, Moore supports a change to Senate rules for confirmations to blast through Senate Democrats' blockade of Trump's nominees. He's in support of shortening the debate time on nominees, one of the options on the table for when lawmakers return from their August break, and argued that Democrats "are playing the obstructionist" despite Trump winning big in the 2024 election. "The American people are fed up with that, so I say we change the rules and allow these nominees to get the jobs and start doing the job so they can help the president achieve his agenda," he said.
