Opinion | Trump’s billionaire pick for commerce secretary could backfire on Republicans
Presidential candidate Donald Trump promised cheering crowds nationwide that he would impose across-the-board tariffs to generate revenue to replace income taxes and rebuild American manufacturing. This week, in a sign that he won’t fulfill that goal, President-elect Trump named billionaire investment bank CEO Howard Lutnick to lead his trade and tariff agenda.
Trump’s proposed two-for-one Cabinet seat deal bodes ill for the working-class voters who delivered vital swing states and the presidency to Trump.
Trump’s proposed two-for-one Cabinet seat deal — tapping Lutnik for commerce secretary but assigning him “additional direct responsibility for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative” — bodes ill for the working-class voters who delivered vital swing states and the presidency to Trump. Lutnick’s public statements reveal that he knows little about trade. His lengthy career on Wall Street has imprinted him with views about tariffs contrary to Trump’s and makes him highly susceptible to persuasion by every corporate lobbyist he encounters in the private jet hangar.
But Lutnick’s appointment could be a real bonanza for Democrats seeking to regain the longtime support of voters without college degrees and those earning less than $100,000 annually. His likely failure to produce policies that live up to this demographic’s expectations could provide Democrats a golden opportunity to relitigate who stands up economically for working people.
Trump intuited what research shows: Voters nationwide most affected by past trade-related job losses view tariffs, whether or not they deliver jobs, as a “as a sign of political solidarity” that conveys standing up for their communities.
Apparently forgetting how his trade appeals delivered swing states and a Trump win in 2016, Harris dove into Trump’s tariff trap. She attacked Trump’s tariff proposal on the stump and then at the start of the one and only debate, which allowed Trump to clarify to the nation that what Harris called his “national sales tax” was really his promised tariffs. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Harris’ pick for vice president, and her surrogates like Mark Cuban attacked “Trump’s tariffs.” So did a Harris ad that played in western Pennsylvania. By mid-September, a Reuters poll showed that 56% of all Americans favored Trump’s tariffs.
The Harris campaign inexplicably failed to tout how the Biden-Harris administration’s industrial policies and tariffs that were bigger than Trump’s spurred the highest rate of investment in new American factory construction in 30 years. Or that the administration had already created 150,000 more manufacturing jobs than Trump before those plants opened. Nor did Harris’ campaign hold Trump accountable for not delivering on his 2016 trade promises to end job offshoring and our trade deficit.
There was some smart politics underlying Trump’s seeming tariff fetish, but now someone in Trumplandia II has to translate that into policy and action. That’s highly unlikely to be Lutnick, a cocky, decadeslong Wall Street insider. He toured the cable and podcast circuit in the run-up to the election, proclaiming that the only good use of tariffs is as “bargaining chips” for negotiating more tariff-cutting trade deals.
Wait, like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) opposed by Trump and many U.S. voters?
Lutnick recently insinuated on CNBC that Trump may be grifting voters and really favors Lutnick’s temporary, targeted tariff approach. Asked whether Trump would impose his promised across-the-board tariffs, Lutnick said, “When you are running for office, you make broad statements so people understand you. … But he understands, don’t tariff stuff we don’t make.”
So will Lutnick remove the tariffs Trump imposed — and Biden increased — on solar panels, microchips and medical equipment imposed precisely because we must rebuild capacity to produce significant supplies of these critical goods we no longer make?
At best, Lutnick is so ignorant about trade that he is unaware that his opposition to Trump’s across-the-board tariffs conflicts with his enthusiasm for Trump’s notion that tariffs can replace income taxes as a major source of government revenue.
It’s not even sophisticated matters Lutnick flubs.
It’s not even sophisticated matters Lutnick flubs. Contrary to what he has said, U.S. auto exports do not face 100% tariffs in Europe and Japan. Cars from there do not enter here duty-free. The Marshall Plan is unrelated to this imagined regime. Reciprocal duty-free trade is no answer to today’s top trade challenge of how and when to trade with countries like China that employ massive subsidies and/or currency manipulation, artificially suppress wages by crushing workers’ rights and cut costs via environmental dumping.
Moreover, being so clueless leaves Lutnick highly susceptible to being wangled by special interest lobbyists and the anti-change career government officials Trump calls the “deep state.” Recall that during Trump’s first term, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer was the only one among Trump’s senior economic officials who had the informed vision, technical knowledge and political savvy to help deliver on his boss’ trade pledges.
Lutnick being put in charge of things is highly unlikely to end well — for either Trump, Lutnick or, most importantly, the American people. Democrats could take advantage of this — that is, if they do not kneecap themselves again by, for instance, adding anti-tariff attacks to their fight against Trump’s promised tax cuts for the wealthiest. (As a policy matter, tariffs do not, in fact, automatically raise consumer prices.)
Going forward, Democrats can take back trade as their issue by explaining that tariffs are an essential defense against unfair imports made under labor and environmental conditions with which we cannot and should not compete and other anti-competitive strategies that countries deploy so their products unfairly dominate markets. Without a tariff defense, such goods will fill domestic demand and deprive U.S. producers of a fair market, thus chilling investment in new capacity, crushing domestic production and leaving us as vulnerable as ever to overly concentrated production and long brittle supply chains.
Democrats can contest Trump’s approach by showing that tariffs alone will not build new production capacity, ensure Americans have reliable access to goods or improve our security. During the pre-pandemic Trump years, U.S. manufacturing investment was stagnant even after sizable tariffs. Investment in American manufacturing only boomed in late 2021 after the Democrats’ infrastructure bill passed. Then, after the enactment of the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act in April 2022, a U.S. factory investment record set in 2015 was surpassed.
These are the gains that Trump will end if he follows through on his promises to kill Democrats’ industrial policy programs. Combining tariffs with tax, investment, procurement and other industrial policy tools started to reverse decades of U.S. deindustrialization, which the whole country realized was not just a problem for manufacturing workers but a problem for all of us when Covid and resulting supply chain shocks exposed our lack of resilience. The political party that delivers American trade policies that benefit working people, smaller manufacturers, independent farmers and consumers will build an electoral majority. It’s unlikely that Lutnick can help the GOP on that mission.
