President-elect Donald Trump has nominated fellow New York businessman and longterm friend Howard Lutnick to lead the Commerce Department, and FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell says she supports an investigation into alleged anti-Trump bias during hurricane relief efforts.
Trump nominates New York billionaire, longtime friend Howard Lutnick to lead Commerce Department
President-elect Donald Trump named billionaire Howard Lutnick, a New York businessman and longtime friend, to be his nominee for commerce secretary. Lutnick has helped lead Trump’s transition team since it was formed this summer.
“He will lead our Tariff and Trade agenda, with additional direct responsibility for the Office of the United States Trade Representative,” Trump said in a statement Tuesday. “In his role as the 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.”
The Trump transition team praised Lutnick as “a dynamic force on Wall Street for more than 30 years” and noted the brokerage and investment bank he helms, Cantor Fitzgerald, lost 658 of its 960 New York-based employees — including his brother and best friend — to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center, where the firm was headquartered.
Lutnick has donated to both Democrats and Republicans in the past, once appeared on Trump’s NBC reality show, “The Apprentice,” and has become a part of the president-elect’s inner circle. He shared the stage with Trump at events in the closing days of his campaign, including at a rally at Madison Square Garden.
The nomination would put Lutnick in charge of a sprawling Cabinet agency that is involved in funding new computer chip factories, imposing trade restrictions, releasing economic data and monitoring the weather. It is also a position in which connections to CEOs and the wider business community are crucial.
An advocate for imposing wide-ranging tariffs, Lutnick told CNBC in September that “tariffs are an amazing tool for the president to use — we need to protect the American worker." Trump on the campaign trail proposed a 60% tariff on goods from China — and a tariff of up to 20% on everything else the United States imports.
Mainstream economists are generally skeptical of tariffs, considering them a mostly inefficient way for governments to raise money and promote prosperity.
Lutnick had been considered for treasury secretary, a role that has been at the center of high-profile jockeying within the Trump world. At the same time, the treasury position is closely watched in financial circles, where a disruptive nominee could have immediate negative consequences on the stock market, which Trump watches closely.
FEMA administrator says she supports investigation of alleged Trump bias in relief efforts
The head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency told lawmakers Tuesday she has encouraged the agency's inspector general to review whether an employee was acting alone when directing workers helping hurricane victims not to go to homes with yards signs supporting President-elect Donald Trump.
FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell said a critical function of the agency is to go door-to-door and meet with survivors to make them aware of federal resources available. The employee, she said, wrote to about 11 staffers under her supervision that they should “avoid homes advertising Trump.”
Criswell said her senior leadership team provided her with evidence and recommended that the employee be terminated. She concurred.
“I do not believe that this employee's actions are indicative of any widespread cultural problems at FEMA,” Criswell said. Still, she said she would support an independent investigation into the matter.
"The IG has not yet stated they want to investigate this, but I highly encourage them to take on this case and look and see if this was a widespread issue or if this was just a single incident,” Criswell said.
Criswell appeared before a House subcommittee investigating the federal government's response to Hurricanes Helene and Milton. She did so one day following President Joe Biden's request for nearly $100 billion in emergency disaster aid, with about $40 billion of that money slated for FEMA programs.
It was clear that while lawmakers were conducting an oversight hearing looking at the overall response by FEMA to the devastating storms, they were particularly focused on reports about the agency avoiding helping some Americans based on their political beliefs.
Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., acknowledged that while the employee was quickly terminated, it was clear from an interview with that worker that she believed she was carrying out directions from the agency.
“It seems this particular worker believes she is being treated like the scapegoat, and if that is the case, more people at FEMA must be held accountable," said Perry, who chairs the panel that held Tuesday's hearing.
Criswell said she is committed to ensuring “nothing like this ever happens again.” In the meantime, a different team was sent into the field to contact all the homes that had been skipped over at the employee's direction.