Bare-Knuckle Tactics and Brash Promises: How Howard Lutnick Operates

In a freewheeling first year in office, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, one of President Trump’s most influential deputies, has used the power of the federal government in unorthodox and aggressive ways. Some of his tactics have been creative. Others were blunt-force. Still others were downright outlandish. All of them were honed during decades at the helm of the Wall Street investment firm Cantor Fitzgerald, a period in which he amassed wealth and prominence and assumed leadership positions at a dizzying array of corporate entities, at least 818 in all. Now, as Sec Lutnick presides over a broad and important agenda, from planning the 2030 census to regulating technology flows to rivals like China, a close examination of those companies’ dealings offers lessons on how he has operated as commerce secretary. He is an intuitive deal maker with an appetite for risk and a willingness to walk up to ethical lines. He has acted as a steward of firms that have paid more than $50 million in penalties for money laundering, misleading disclosures, and other offenses. By turns charming and caustic, Lutnick as commerce secretary has kept negotiating partners off balance, pressuring foreign countries and American companies alike into making concessions while pushing legal boundaries in seeking new revenue for the government.