US President-elect Donald Trump has said he will nominate Wall Street CEO Howard Lutnick to lead his trade and tariff strategy as the head of the Commerce Department, the agency that has become the US weapon of choice against China's tech sector.
Lutnick was recently critical of the nature of Ireland's trade relationship with the US.
"It's nonsense that Ireland of all places runs a trade surplus at our expense. We don’t make anything here any more – even great American cars are made in Mexico. When we end this nonsense, America will be a truly great country again. You’ll be shocked," he wrote in a post on X in October.
Donald Trump has promised to impose significant tariffs on imports to the US, including 60% on goods coming from China and up to 20% on goods from elsewhere.
Ireland exports significant amounts of goods to the US every year, particularly in areas like pharmaceuticals.
Lutnick, the head of brokerage firm Cantor Fitzgerald, will also have "additional direct responsibility" for the US Trade Representative's office, Trump said in a statement.
Trump's transition team did not immediately respond to requests for clarity on Lutnick's responsibilities, including whether he would also serve as US Trade Representative, traditionally the top trade job in the federal government.
With the appointments, Trump taps a long-time friend who backs the Republican's vision to bring manufacturing jobs back to the US and promote the adoption of cryptocurrency.
Lutnick also runs brokerage BGC Group and is chairman of Newmark Group, a commercial real estate services firm, and FMX, a platform owned by some of Wall Street's biggest banks and traders. Shares of BGC fell 2%.
His appointment also leaves question marks over whether Trump's former USTR and tariff architect, Robert Lighthizer, would join his new administration. Lighthizer had been mentioned as a possible candidate for the Commerce and Treasury secretary posts. He could not immediately be reached for comment.
The sprawling Commerce Department oversees a vast array of functions with nearly 47,000 employees, from the US Census Bureau to weather forecasting and ocean navigation and investment promotion.
Its trade-related functions have grown in importance in recent years. They include authority over export controls on sensitive US technologies, which have put it at the center of trade conflicts with China, as well as investigating anti-dumping and anti-subsidy cases that often result in punitive tariffs to protect domestic industries.
Trump used Commerce's authority over the "Section 232" national security trade statute to underpin his 2018 tariffs on steel and aluminum and may invoke it again to impose broad global tariffs on imports, trade experts say.
To rebuild the US manufacturing base, Trump has vowed to impose new tariffs of at least 60% on Chinese imports and 10%-20% on goods from elsewhere -- moves that economists say would upend global trade flows and raise costs.
Fearing Beijing could weaponise American technology to strengthen its military, both the Trump and Biden administrations have used Commerce Department authorities aggressively to impose regulations to halt the flow of US and foreign technology to China - with a special emphasis on semiconductors and the equipment used to make them.
Over the past two years, the US issued sweeping export controls on advanced chips and chipmaking equipment to China, which has limited its access to cutting-edge chips for artificial intelligence and equipment needed to produce the next generation of semiconductors.
Unlike other members of Trump's inner circle, Lutnick does not speak about China often.
He is a big proponent of tariffs, especially aimed at China. According to the New York Times, the investment banker said in a podcast interview last month: "Don't tax our people. Make money instead. Put tariffs on China and make $400 billion."
Cantor Fitzgerald has offices in Hong Kong. Last year, it underwrote Chinese biotech firm Adlai Nortye's NASDAQ IPO, the first successful Chinese company to list since Beijing implemented new rules requiring Chinese firms to obtain a special filing before listing shares overseas.
The next commerce secretary will be responsible for enforcing a range of rules put in place to hamper China's development of artificial intelligence and keep some of its biggest tech firms, including Huawei Technologies and Semiconductor Manufacturing International, several steps behind their global competition in key technologies.
As co-chair of Trump's transition team, Lutnick had been seen for weeks as a possible candidate for a position in the Trump administration, including Treasury secretary.
A native of New York City's Long Island suburbs with a background in trading and real estate, Lutnick has been one of Trump's top Wall Street advocates, hosting fundraisers and touting his policies in the media.
Outgoing public expenditure minister Paschal Donohoe has said US president-elect Donald Trump's proposed appointment of Howard Lutnick as commerce secretary "underpins why we have been right to move our public finances from the red into the black twice".
Mr Donohoe said the appointment reminded him of the value of the difficult journey that the country has made to returning the public finances into surplus again after a pandemic.
"Our public finances at the moment are in good health, our debt as a share of national income has fallen in recent years, we're at full employment, we have a very large surplus, and the reason year after year after year I've made the argument of not spending what could be available to us is to be able to guard against and protect against what could develop," Paschal Donohoe said.
"We have engaged and look forward to engaging with president Trump's administration, we engaged heavily with the first president Trump administration, and the next government will need to do the same and will do the same but we will approach this from a position of budget surpluses," he added.
Asked if the proposed appointment, and other potential economic actions by Mr Trump's incoming administration, Mr Donohoe said: "I think there's many developments that take place at the moment that do pose a challenge to the consensus of global trade and taxation".
"I wouldn't pick out any one individual, but I think it's obvious to all of us that the consensus to how tax and trade is being managed in the global economy is changing," he said.
"If you're a small open economy like we are, that in itself poses a real challenge to us, but it's the reason why budget after budget after budget we have moved our public finances into the level of surplus that they are," he stated.
Additional reporting by Fiachra Ó Cionnaith
