President-elect Donald Trump has picked Howard Lutnick, a longtime friend and chief executive of the financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald, as his nominee for Commerce secretary, he announced on Truth Social Tuesday afternoon.

As head of the Commerce Department, Lutnick “will lead our Tariff and Trade agenda, with additional direct responsibility for the Office of the United States Trade Representative,” Trump said.

The billionaire is a well-known figure on Wall Street who has been co-leading Trump’s transition operation over the past several months, taking the lead on vetting candidates to fill top jobs across the administration — with an emphasis on loyalty and business experience. Lutnick also was a major financial backer of Trump’s candidacy, donating and raising tens of millions of dollars during the campaign.

Lutnick, 63, had been in the running to be Treasury secretary, but the president-elect soured on him due to infighting between Lutnick and other prominent candidates for the job — particularly financier Scott Bessent.

The selection was first reported by Punchbowl News.

Lutnick rose to prominence when he rebuilt Cantor Fitzgerald after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that killed 658 of the company’s employees, including his brother.

Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) cited that tragedy Tuesday when asked about his pending nomination. “He has been outrageously successful in life under the most-adverse-setback, on-your-heels circumstances that life can throw at a person,” said Lummis, a member of the Senate Banking and Commerce, Science and Transportation committees, which will vote to confirm the Commerce secretary. “Howard rebuilt the business to the powerhouse it is again today, and helped make the families who lost loved ones whole financially. So this is a guy who both has a heart and a drive to succeed.”

She predicted he would not have trouble being confirmed, adding, “wherever he goes, he will be an impact player in the Trump administration.”

If confirmed by the Senate, Lutnick, who has no previous government experience, will take over a portfolio of agencies focused on promoting jobs and economic growth as well as the Census Bureau, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, among others.

The Commerce Department also houses two important trade agencies: the International Trade Administration, which sets duties on goods the United States has determined are unfairly priced or subsidized; and the Bureau of Industry and Security, which imposes export controls to try to keep sensitive U.S. technologies out of the reach of adversarial nations. BIS also plays a key role in national security investigations that can lead to new tariffs, such as the ones that Trump imposed on steel and aluminum in 2018, during his first term as president.

Lutnick has talked about slashing regulations, enacting Trump’s sweeping tariffs, boosting energy production, extending the 2017 tax cuts and lowering the corporate tax rate. In addition, Lutnick has been a vocal proponent of the crypto industry and would be in a position to carry out Trump’s campaign promise to make the U.S. the “crypto capital of the planet.”

Lutnick has defended Trump’s plan for across-the-board tariffs, which is concerning to many of his Wall Street counterparts, calling them “a bargaining chip” in trade negotiations. “We should put tariffs on stuff we make and not put tariffs on stuff we don’t make,” Lutnick said in a CNBC appearance in September.

Lutnick, who joined Cantor Fitzgerald in 1983 and has been its CEO since 1991, is a longtime Trump associate, even appearing at one point on “Celebrity Apprentice.”

For years a registered Democrat, Lutnick donated to both Republicans and Democrats in the 2016 election. He financially backed Trump’s 2020 campaign, but it wasn’t until this past election that Lutnick emerged as a megadonor with an outsized influence over Trump’s planning to retake the White House.

“Donald Trump is going to build the greatest team to ever walk into government, and we are going to balance our budget,” Lutnick said at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally in the run-up to the election.

Lutnick has said that the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel motivated him to get more involved in working to elect Trump. Trump “had clear, moral clarity when it came to Israel and what happened, and the way that he thought about what happened,” Lutnick told The Philadelphia Inquirer. “That was huge to me.”

Ari Hawkins and Doug Palmer contributed to this report.