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Howard Lutnick, the financier President Trump has picked to lead the Commerce Department, said he favored “across-the-board” tariffs and was grilled about his financial ties in a nomination hearing Wednesday.
By Ana Swanson
Ana Swanson covers trade and the Commerce Department.
- Jan. 29, 2025Updated 7:26 p.m. ET
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.”
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