Trump Appoints Witkoff

After being sidelined in the competition for treasury secretary, Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick was tapped by President-elect Donald Trump to run the Commerce Department.

In a press release, Trump praised Lutnick’s work as co-chair of his transition team and said the billionaire — whose firm owns commercial brokerage Newmark — will lead the administration’s trade and tariff agenda. Lutnick will also have “direct responsibility” for the Office of the United States Trade Representative, which advises the president on trade issues.

The appointment is perhaps a letdown for Lutnick, who has reportedly been gunning to head the Department of the Treasury, a more prestigious post. He and Key Square Capital Management founder Scott Bessent were vying for that job, but Trump started looking at other candidates after Lutnick’s persistence and meddling in the selection process started to grate on Trump, according to the New York Times.

Another factor may have been Trump’s desire for the stock market’s rise to continue under his presidency, the Times reported.

Trump is expected to meet this week with two other possible Treasury picks, Apollo Global Management Chief Executive Marc Rowan and Kevin Warsh, who previously served on the Federal Reserve’s board of governors, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The Department of Commerce is described as the “voice of business” in the federal government and is tasked with promoting “trade and commercial agreements that bring new opportunity to U.S. businesses and maintain national security.”

The department played a key role in tariffs applied during the first Trump administration. In 2018, it concluded that the high level of imports of steel and aluminum impaired national security, which paved the way for the president to impose a tariff on those materials.

Trump has called for much steeper tariffs this time — 60 percent on goods imported from China and at least 10 percent on all other imports.

Lutnick was one of the president-elect’s loudest supporters on Wall Street and gave millions of dollars to pro-Trump super PAC Make America Great Again.

He became CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald in 1991. The spinoff of the firm’s brokerage business, BGC Partners, acquired Newmark in 2011. Lutnick will likely need to divest from his interests in the firm to abide by conflict of interest rules, but he could reinvest proceeds from those sales into Treasuries and certain index funds to defer capital gains taxes until he sells them.

As transition co-chair, Lutnick has consulted with Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who runs investment firm Affinity Partners and has a 20 percent stake in Kushner Companies, as well as Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman on potential hires, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Lutnick is not the only industry player set to join the second Trump administration. Trump has also named developer and longtime friend Steve Witkoff as a special envoy to the Middle East.

Last week Trump posted on social media that Witkoff is a “Highly Respected Leader in Business and Philanthropy,” and said the developer has made every project and community he has been involved with “stronger and more prosperous.”

Witkoff has extensive experience in developing luxury condos and development but none in formal diplomacy. The responsibilities of his role have not been publicly outlined. The Biden administration’s last two envoys focused on providing humanitarian aid to Gaza.

Trump’s last Middle East special envoy, Justin Greenblatt, also hailed from New York City real estate, having worked at the Trump Organization for two decades.

Witkoff has stood by Trump through his various legal issues, appearing as an expert witness on Trump’s behalf during his civil fraud trial last year and providing moral support during Trump’s criminal hush money trial in Manhattan. He was with Trump at a Palm Beach golf course when the Secret Service interrupted an attempt to assassinate the former president.

Trump credited Witkoff with brokering peace between him and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Witkoff arranged an April meeting between the two at his Shell Bay Club, a private club in Hollywood, Florida.

In July, Witkoff told TRD that his support for Trump’s re-election went “well beyond real estate,” saying he was confident Trump would fight inflation and bring “strength” to foreign policy.

That month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Witkoff was in attendance, and on the social media platform X, described Netanyahu’s remarks as “epic and deeply moving” and called Trump the “strongest and most vocal supporter of Israel in generations.”

It is not yet clear who will lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development under Trump. Bill Pulte, who runs Pulte Capital, which focuses on acquiring homebuilding and construction businesses, is being considered for the job, according to the New York Post. Pulte is the grandson of William Pulte, founder of Atlanta-based homebuilder the PulteGroup.