Howard Lutnick, a wealthy donor to President Trump who has been chosen to lead the Commerce Department, defended Mr. Trump’s plans to impose broad tariffs and said he would take a tough stance on technology sales to China during his Senate confirmation hearing on Wednesday.
If confirmed, Mr. Lutnick would lead on trade policy and oversee a broad portfolio of government programs touching on business promotion, technology and science. He told lawmakers that he favored “across-the-board” tariffs that would hit entire countries rather than specific products, to equal out America’s trading relationships.
He said that, while he believed tariffs on China “should be the highest,” governments in Europe, Japan and South Korea had also taken advantage of the United States on trade. He said that American farmers, ranchers and fishers were being “treated with disrespect around the world.”
“We need that disrespect to end, and I think tariffs are a way to create reciprocity, to be treated fairly, to be treated appropriately,” he said. Mr. Lutnick also insisted that tariffs would not cause inflation, though many economists say tariffs are often at least partly passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices.
Asked about China’s recent advances in artificial intelligence, 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 that the recent A.I. 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,” he said of China, adding: “I’m going to be very strong on that.”
Mr. Lutnick also tried to walk a careful line when it came to a $50 billion program created by Congress in 2022 to help bring semiconductor manufacturing back to the United States from Asia. Mr. Lutnick would play a key role in overseeing that program, which was created by the program, known as the CHIPS Act.
Mr. Trump has recently been critical of the program and described it as a waste of money, even though its origins lay in the Trump administration. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company agreed to build a chip factory in the United States in 2020 after being offered the promise of subsidies by Trump officials. Lawmakers later expanded those subsidies to include other companies. Last year, T.S.M.C. was awarded $6.6 billion in grants by the Biden administration.
Speaking to Republican lawmakers on Monday evening, Mr. Trump said the government could have brought companies back to the United States by threatening them with tariffs rather than giving them subsidies.
“We want them to come back, and we don’t want to give them billions of dollars like this ridiculous program that Biden has,” the president said. “They already have billions of dollars. They’ve got nothing but money, Joe.”
Mr. Lutnick said in Wednesday’s hearing that he supported chip manufacturing in America and described the chips program as “necessary and important.” But he also repeatedly said he would “study” the program and refused to commit outright to honoring legal contracts that companies have already finalized and signed with the government.
“I can’t say that I can honor something I haven’t read,” he said of the contracts.
As the head of the Commerce Department, Mr. Lutnick would be in charge of government programs with enormous sway over the business and technology sectors.
The Commerce Department — which has 51,000 workers and an $11 billion budget — is in charge of promoting business interests abroad, restricting technology exports to protect national security, and delivering subsidies to the semiconductor and broadband industries. It also oversees the U.S. census, patents, weather forecasting, fisheries and the development of global technological standards, among other functions.
Mr. Trump has also said that Mr. Lutnick would lead the administration’s trade policy more broadly, including overseeing the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, a small agency with fewer than 250 employees that negotiates trade deals and levies certain tariffs. The agency technically reports directly to the president, as well as to Congress.
Mr. Lutnick has argued in favor of Mr. Trump’s economic vision, saying that the mix of lower corporate taxes, fewer regulations, more oil production and higher tariffs will help supercharge the U.S. economy. Mr. Lutnick is also a part of Mr. Trump’s efforts to eliminate parts of the federal government, and has described himself as the founding force behind the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, a cost-cutting effort.
A longtime donor to Mr. Trump, Mr. Lutnick more recently became a key economic adviser and helped to lead his transition team. Mr. Lutnick is the chief executive and chairman of Cantor Fitzgerald, a Wall Street brokerage, and holds leadership positions at BGC, another brokerage, and Newmark Group, a commercial real estate firm. Mr. Lutnick has promised to resign the positions if confirmed.
Lawmakers and Vice President JD Vance — who made a brief appearance at the hearing — touted Mr. Lutnick’s personal story, describing him as someone who had achieved great success despite facing adversity. Mr. Lutnick lost both his parents by the time he was 18, and became chairman of Cantor at just 35. A Long Island native, he lost his brother and most of Cantor Fitzgerald’s employees in the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center.
Through Cantor and his other firms, Mr. Lutnick has acquired holdings and executive positions in a stunning array of companies. Financial disclosures filed by Mr. Lutnick last week showed that he has or previously had executive positions in more than 800 companies, and had at least $800 million in assets.
For Mr. Trump and his supporters, Mr. Lutnick’s wealth and business success are strong qualifications for the role of commerce secretary. But Democrats view Mr. Lutnick’s financial ties with more skepticism, saying they could raise questions about his ability to put the interests of the American people ahead of those of himself and former business partners. In the hearing, they questioned Mr. Lutnick about his financial ties, particularly Cantor Fitzgerald’s investments in a cryptocurrency company called Tether.
In a letter addressed to Mr. Lutnick on Monday, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, called Tether “a known facilitator of criminal activity that has been described as ‘outlaws’ favorite cryptocurrency,’” saying that the tool had financed Mexican drug cartels, terrorist groups and the North Korean nuclear weapons program.
The connections with Tether “raise significant questions about your own personal judgment and the conflicts of interest that you will have if you are confirmed as Commerce secretary,” Ms. Warren wrote to Mr. Lutnick.
At his hearing, Mr. Lutnick denied any wrongdoing on the part of Cantor or Tether, saying it was like “blaming Apple because criminals use Apple phones.”
“It’s just a product,” he said. “We don’t pick on the U.S. Treasury because criminals use dollars.”
Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, also questioned Mr. Lutnick about his business ties to Greenland. The New York Times reported on Wednesday that Mr. Lutnick has financial interests in the mining industry in Greenland, through Cantor Fitzgerald. Cantor has invested in a company called Critical Metals Corp, which 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. The governments of both Denmark and Greenland say the territory is not for sale.
