CNN
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Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick was adamant: The US is not headed toward recession.
“Donald Trump is bringing growth to America. I would never bet on recession. No chance,” Lutnick said on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” one of dozens of TV appearances he’s made in touting the Trump administration’s tariff agenda.
Meanwhile on Fox News, President Donald Trump was much more circumspect about the prospect of recession.
“I hate to predict things like that,” Trump said in striking a starkly different tone than his Commerce secretary. “There is a period of transition, because what we’re doing is very big. We’re bringing wealth back to America. That’s a big thing. And there are always periods of – it takes a little time.”
As the White House has kicked off its trade war in fits and starts, issuing a litany of haphazard tariffs on a range of imports, Lutnick has assumed the role of cheerleader in chief – someone to soothe the markets and promote the supposed benefits of trade policies that will likely make life more expensive for millions of Americans.
It has not gone well.
The stock market has plummeted, with the S&P 500 falling last week by 10% from its peak just a month ago. Consumer sentiment has turned negative. Business leaders around the world are now preparing for a widespread pull back in investment and earnings.
Interviews with more than a dozen executives and current and former administration officials suggest frustration is rising with Lutnick’s public stances, as doubts emerge about whether he is equipped for such a high-profile role amidst a growing geopolitical maelstrom.
Complicating matters, Lutnick’s own views on trade are more nuanced than his salesmanship would suggest. Privately, he’s told friends he’s “not thrilled” with Trump’s impulsive approach to repeatedly ratchet up tariffs instead of leveraging them for future concessions.
In his near-constant presence on cable television, Lutnick, the long-time CEO of a Wall Street trading firm who’s donated millions of his own money to Trump over the years, finds himself in the unenviable position of trying to stabilize a situation that is by design meant to destabilize.
“He’s got a bit of a curse,” said one Wall Street executive. “He’s got to be the guy out there advocating for Trump, even if he doesn’t own the policy design.”
Trump reiterated on Sunday he won’t pull back on tariffs, telling reporters on Air Force one there would be “no exemptions” for steel and aluminum tariffs and that his proposed reciprocal tariffs would take effect on April 2.
In his brusque New York fashion, Lutnick rose from a relatively obscure Wall Street trading firm to the highest echelons of the Republican Party by outmuscling and outspending longtime Trump loyalists. His aggressive approach cost him the job he wanted most in the administration, Treasury secretary, but it also helped seal his fate as the de facto face of Trump’s trade war.
White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement to CNN: “Every member of the Trump administration is playing from the same playbook — President Trump’s playbook — to enact an America First agenda of tariffs, tax cuts, deregulation, and the unleashing of American energy.
“Secretary Lutnick and the rest of the administration remain aligned on delivering economic prosperity for the American people, an effort that is already bringing results – including the February jobs report showing a dramatic reversal of hemorrhaging manufacturing jobs during the Biden administration and trillions in investment commitments from industry titans ranging from TSMC to Apple,” Desai said.
After Trump’s victory in 2024, Lutnick became a central figure in deciding the makeup of the new Cabinet as co-chair of the Trump transition.
He had a job in mind for himself: Treasury secretary.
Lutnick was up against Scott Bessent, a billionaire hedge fund manager and MAGA convert who was seen as closer to Wall Street and was not as supportive of sweeping tariffs as Lutnick.
With Trump close to picking Bessent, Lutnick embarked on an aggressive 11th-hour campaign to pitch himself for the job, CNN previously reported. He maneuvered behind the scenes to try to convince Trump that he was the only candidate who would fully support his tariff plans. Even Elon Musk weighed in on X to publicly back Lutnick over Bessent.
Transition aides began comparing Lutnick to Dick Cheney, who was tasked to lead the search for George W. Bush’s 2000 vice-presidential candidate before selecting himself.
Lutnick settled for the Commerce job – and oversight of the Office of the US Trade Representative – as a consolation prize.
Within the administration, there are still “knives out” between Lutnick and Bessent, said one senior advisor. During the confirmation hearings, White House staff felt they needed to choose sides of who they would help prepare, Bessent or Lutnick, according to people familiar with the dynamic.
Within Trump’s immediate orbit, Lutnick’s posture places him as a sort of middle-man between Peter Navarro, a tariff true-believer, and Bessent, who’s more pro-growth .
Former Trump officials say the administration sorely misses Robert Lighthizer, the architect of Trump’s first-term trade agenda, as a key internal voice amid the market turmoil.
“He was a moderating influence on Peter Navarro,” one senior Trump adviser said of Lighthizer. “And he was much more attuned to how [the president’s] positions played politically.”
In a statement to CNN, Navarro said: “I’m working with the finest trade policy team ever assembled to implement President Trump’s vision for reciprocal trade – a vision in which American workers are never cheated again.”
“We are a diverse group with complementary skill sets and a high level of trust … who debate behind closed doors and emerge as ‘one band, one sound,’ all orchestrated by the most visionary commander in chief in modern presidential history,” Navarro said.
Meanwhile, Lighthizer, who had been in contention for the top job at Commerce, has been watching the trade drama unfold from the speaking circuit and his home in Palm Beach, Florida, according to people close to him. Lighthizer turned down an offer to return to his perch at USTR or serve as a trade czar, but these people suggest he could join the administration if there’s turnover in the Cabinet.
Elsewhere in the Cabinet, Lutnick’s brusqueness has been welcomed. In trade negotiations with Canadian provinces, Lutnick at times has worked alongside Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. Burgum’s gubernatorial bona fides have complemented Lutnick’s New York brashness to create a “good cop, bad cop” dynamic, according to Kevin O’Leary, a Canadian businessman close to the administration.
“He’s a really good bad cop,” O’Leary told CNN of Lutnick.
Lutnick’s heavy rotation on TV has echoes of Larry Kudlow, a longtime business-news anchor who fiercely defended Trump’s first-term agenda while serving as his director of the National Economic Council.
The key difference, insiders note, is that Kudlow’s appearances often had the intended effect of stabilizing markets.
Some Trump loyalists worry that Lutnick plays fast and loose with the facts, creating a track record of misstatements. In October, Lutnick told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins that Musk would not work in the administration but would “write software” for the government. And Lutnick categorically denied Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would lead the Department of Health and Human Services. Kennedy would be named to that role two weeks later.
Lutnick has also gotten ahead of the president, declaring last week that Trump intended to eliminate taxes for anyone making less than $150,000. And leaked news of a Lutnick-led plan to privatize the US Postal Service resulted in a White House scramble – and threat of legal challenges – well before the plan was ready for release.
Lutnick’s status as a green room denizen has irked corporate America, too. Two executives of Fortune 50 companies told CNN they’ve been able to get meetings with senior members of Trump’s staff like deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller – but not with Lutnick.
“He’s too busy being on f**king television,” said one of the executives, who was granted anonymity to describe private interactions with the administration.
A White House official pushed back on that criticism, saying that Lutnick has been in regular contact with CEOs and executives in the business community, particularly as trade discussions have heated up with Canada and Mexico.
Lutnick made his fortune in the bare-knuckled world of stock and bond trading at Cantor Fitzgerald, a brokerage firm observers liken to fictional trading floors in “The Bonfire of the Vanities,” or real-life depictions in “Liar’s Poker” or “The Wolf of Wall Street.”
Joining the firm in 1983 as a trainee, Lutnick earned the affection of firm co-founder B. Gerald Cantor and rose through the ranks. By 1991, Lutnick became CEO at the age of 29.
On September 11, 2001, the firm, whose offices were in the North Tower of the World Trade Center, lost 70% of its 960 employees.
Lutnick was spared by a stroke of luck: He’d arrive late after dropping off his 5-year-old son to his first day of kindergarten. Lutnick’s brother Gary was among the victims.
As Cantor Fitzgerald grew – and he took public or sold off parts of its businesses – Lutnick’s wealth grew, too. He began snapping up real estate in Manhattan and the Hamptons and devoting a considerable share of his personal wealth to political causes.
During the 2016 presidential race, Lutnick donated to the campaigns of both Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton, according to campaign finance records. But he was known as a friend of Trump, and after Trump’s 2016 victory he was asked in an interview with CNN’s Richard Quest if he wanted to serve in the new Trump administration.
“You know what? I’ve known him a long time. And I’m rooting for him and hoping great things happen to America,” Lutnick responded.
Months later, he donated $1 million to Trump’s 2017 inauguration. In 2019, Lutnick hosted a fundraiser at his Manhattan apartment that Trump attended ahead of his 2020 reelection campaign.
During the latest presidential campaign, Lutnick gave Trump’s PAC $5 million of his personal money and raised $15 million in August 2024 during a fundraiser he hosted for Trump at his home in the Hamptons.
Seven days later, Trump announced that Lutnick would co-chair his transition team.
Using America’s ‘upper hand’
Seven weeks into the new administration, Lutnick is searching for his ideological groove behind the scenes. Traditionally, the Commerce post is focused squarely on increasing exports for US businesses overseas; Lutnick, by contrast, has found himself promoting policies that could hamper trade with the US.
Lutnick is neither a tariff zealot nor a free trader, friends and advisors say. Instead, they cast him as more of a realist who views tariffs as a tool to achieve certain objectives and challenge the status quo.
“He believes: ‘If we have the power and upper hand and full strength of the US economy, why are we not using it?’” said an executive who has discussed the topic with him.
Here’s what Americans living 15 miles from the Canadian border think of tariffs
But Trump’s new tariffs have been hardly empty threats. In a matter of weeks, he has opened up at least three new fronts in a tit-for-tat trade war. Trump has threatened 25% tariffs on Europe in response to the bloc’s taxation of US tech companies. He’s increased tariffs on Chinese imports by 20 percentage points. And he placed new levies on imports from Canada and Mexico, despite weeks of backchanneling with officials from both countries on immigration and fentanyl efforts.
While Lutnick has cheered on Trump’s tariffs, even he has privately worried that Trump’s bombast has challenged the administration’s ability to secure a stronger trade pact with Canada and Mexico when the deal must be agreed to again by July 2026, according to a senior Trump adviser.
“He’d much prefer to do this as part of negotiations for USMCA,” the senior adviser said of the NAFTA replacement negotiated in 2018. “He’s afraid [Trump] has jumped the shark.”
Lutnick was among the advisors surprised by Trump’s response in early March to a retaliatory threat from Ontario’s premier, Doug Ford, with a pledge to double tariffs on Canada’s steel and aluminum to 50%.
Both moves sent stocks sharply lower, spurring Lutnick into action. The two spoke by phone on March 11, leading Ford to back down from his plan to place a 25% charge on electric power Canada was sending to the northeast US. In return, Trump dropped his threat, a temporary retreat for the self-professed “tariff man.”
On Capitol Hill, Lutnick is not yet a well-known quantity for many Republican senators. Several noted that Lutnick and Trump are close and said that his pro-tariff message is carrying out Trump’s desired policy, even as they expressed concerns about the impacts tariffs will have on inflation and the economy.
“The Cabinet works and responds to the needs and the demands and the requests of the president of the United States, and the two of them have a very close, personal and professional, long-standing relationship,” said Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso of Wyoming.
Asked if Lutnick was responsive to any needs or concerns coming from Capitol Hill, Barrasso pulled out his cell phone, showing that he had spoken to Lutnick just a day prior.
Democrats have their doubts. Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington, the top Democrat on the Senate Commerce Committee, told CNN that Lutnick has been advocating for a policy that cuts directly against his department’s goal of advocating for the business community.
“I think he has become the president’s cheerleader for an idea that that has very little substance behind how that plan would work or how you’d be successful – and doesn’t have a lot of historic results to show that it could be successful,” Cantwell said.
Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, said more time was needed to assess how Trump’s trade trajectory – and Lutnick’s role in it – will play out.
Cornyn said of Lutnick’s staunch defense of Trump’s tariffs: “Well, that’s his job.”
“This is a work in progress,” he said. “We don’t know how that story will end.”
CNN’s Alayna Treene and Lauren Fox contributed to this report
