Who will lead the Commerce Department?
Marketplace All-in-One
Marketplace
4.5 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 20 November 2024
⏱️ 7 minutes
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Summary
President-elect Donald Trump has picked Howard Lutnick to head up the Commerce Department. Lutnick is the CEO of investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald, co-chair of Trump’s transition team and has been instrumental in raising funds for Trump’s campaign. Plus, we speak with author Keith Ferrazzi about his new book, “Never Lead Alone, 10 Shifts from Leadership to Teamship,” and how organizations can and should adjust their mindset in this new era of post-pandemic work.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Who will lead the Commerce Department? Also, what does the Commerce Department do? From Marketplace, I'm Sabree Beneshaw in for David Brancaccio. President-elect Donald Trump has settled on a pick for Commerce Secretary, the CEO of the Investment Bank, Cantor Fitzgerald Howard Lutnik. Marketplace's Nancy Marshall-Genzor joins us now live with more. Hi, Nancy. |
| 0:21.3 | Hey, Sabri. |
| 0:22.2 | So Howard Lutnik still, of course, would need to be confirmed by the Senate. But what do we know about him? |
| 0:28.6 | Well, Lutnik is co-chair of Trump's transition team. He also helped raise a lot of money for Trump. |
| 0:34.6 | He is a populist, Sabri, who's spoken out on tariffs. |
| 0:39.2 | When was America great? This is 19, 125 years ago. We had no income tax. And all we had was tariffs. |
| 0:56.2 | Tariffs, trade policy, that is something that largely falls under the Commerce Department. |
| 1:00.8 | And Trump has promised more tariffs. |
| 1:02.8 | What is Commerce's role there? |
| 1:05.2 | Well, the Commerce Department enforces U.S. trade laws, and that would include tariffs. |
| 1:10.4 | Commerce also determines if foreign companies are dumping products into the U.S. trade laws, and that would include tariffs. Commerce also determines if foreign companies |
| 1:12.9 | are dumping products into the U.S. at an unfairly low price. Then commerce can impose |
| 1:18.4 | anti-dumping penalties. And in a post on truth, Social Trump said Lutnik would have additional |
| 1:25.1 | responsibility for the Office of the U.S. trade representative. |
| 1:29.0 | Now, officially, the U.S.T.R. only reports to the president and Congress. |
| 1:33.3 | What else does the Commerce Department do that Mr. Lutnik would oversee? |
| 1:38.3 | Commerce is just a sprawling government agency, Sabray. It counts the U.S. population every 10 years during the census. |
| 1:46.2 | Commerce is involved in restrictions on exports of U.S. technology to China. The Bureau of Economic |
| 1:52.2 | Analysis is part of commerce, and it produces economic data on things like gross domestic product. |
| 1:58.7 | Howard Lutnik was also considered for Treasury Secretary for a little bit. |
| 2:02.4 | What's the latest on the contenders there, by the way? Mark Rowan, whose head of Apollo |
| 2:07.4 | Global Management is now a top contender. Hedge fund manager, Scott Bessent, and former Fed Governor |
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