US President-elect Donald Trump nominated Howard Lutnick, the co-chair of his transition team, as his commerce secretary on Tuesday -- a choice set to bring a tougher stance on China from the incoming administration.
Lutnick will also lead the country's tariff and trade agenda, with "additional direct responsibility for the Office of the United States Trade Representative," Trump said in a statement.
Tariffs are a key part of Trump's economic agenda and he has promised sweeping duties on all imports when he returns to the White House.
Lutnick is chief executive of financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald and a Trump ally originally tipped as a front-runner for treasury secretary.
But he was instead named to helm Commerce, a smaller department that works to boost American industry and has a key role in policy to shore up the US semiconductor sector and reduce reliance on Asia.
Under President Joe Biden, the Commerce Department stepped up export controls on critical technologies like quantum computing and semiconductor manufacturing goods, taking aim at access by adversaries like Beijing.
Trump's administration could harden this stance.
Lutnick has expressed support for a tariff level of 60 percent on Chinese goods alongside a 10 percent tariff on all other imports.
Both are among proposals that Trump has floated, with the Republican taking aim at countries which have been "ripping us off for years."
In Trump's first term he engaged in a tariffs war with China, with the US Trade Representative's office issuing duties on imports from the world's second-biggest economy.
Lutnick also previously lamented the loss of manufacturing jobs in the United States and offshoring to China.
"I'm all in with Donald Trump," Lutnick told podcaster Anthony Pompliano last month.
In the same interview, he slammed electric cars as "coastal elite nonsense" and blamed China for being the source of fentanyl in the United States.
The deadly drug, many times more powerful than heroin, is responsible for tens of thousands of overdose deaths a year.
"China is attacking America from its guts," he charged.
- Crypto support -
Lutnick was initially tipped to head the Treasury Department but a tussle over the position spilled into the public eye last weekend.
Trump's health secretary pick Robert F. Kennedy Jr. expressed support for Lutnick, saying on social media that "Bitcoin will have no stronger advocate" than him.
The world's richest man Elon Musk also threw his support behind Lutnick for Treasury chief while calling the other top contender, hedge fund manager Scott Bessent, "a business-as-usual choice."
"Business-as-usual is driving America bankrupt, so we need change one way or another," said Musk, who Trump has tapped to lead a new Department of Government Efficiency.
Lutnick recalls losing hundreds of employees in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, a tragedy narrowly he avoided as he was taking his son to school.
Besides Cantor Fitzgerald, Lutnick heads financial technology firm BGC Group and real estate services firm Newmark Group.
He graduated from Haverford College and has a degree in economics, according to his biography on Cantor's website.
As co-chair of Trump's transition team, Lutnick has been identifying new hires for the president-elect's administration.
Former wrestling executive new education secretary
Donald Trump nominated Linda McMahon, former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, on Tuesday to lead the Department of Education, which he has pledged to abolish.
Describing McMahon as a "fierce advocate for Parents' Rights," Trump said in a statement: "We will send Education BACK TO THE STATES, and Linda will spearhead that effort."
McMahon is a co-chair of Trump's transition team ahead of his return to the White House in January. It is tasked with filling some 4,000 positions in the government.
Regarding McMahon's experience in education, Trump cited her two-year stint on the Connecticut Board of Education and 16 years on the board of trustees at Sacred Heart University, a private Catholic school.
McMahon left WWE in 2009 to run in vain for US Senate, and has been a major donor to Trump.
Since 2021, she has chaired the Center For The American Worker at the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute.
During the election campaign Trump promised to do away with the federal education department when he returns to the White House.
"I say it all the time. I’m dying to get back to do this. We will ultimately eliminate the federal Department of Education,” he said in September during a rally in Wisconsin.
At the Republican convention in Milwaukee, McMahon said she was "privileged to call Donald Trump a colleague and a boss," as well as "a friend."
Her ties with Trump go back to her years in the professional wrestling industry -- she said she first met him as chief executive at WWE.
At the culmination of a staged feud, Trump once body-slammed her husband, legendary wrestling promoter Vince McMahon, and shaved his head in the middle of a wrestling ring on live television.
In 2017, she was confirmed as the head of the Small Business Administration, which is responsible for supporting America's millions of small businesses, which employ around half the country's private-sector workforce.
In nominating her, Trump pointed to her experience in business, helping to grow the WWE.
After leaving the administration, she served as chair of the pro-Trump America First Action SuperPAC, or political action committee.
TV celebrity 'Dr Oz' appointed to key health post
Donald Trump announced Tuesday that he was appointing Mehmet Oz, a former surgeon and TV celebrity known as "Dr. Oz," to lead the United States' massive public health insurance program.
The 64-year-old heart surgeon was championed on daytime television by Oprah Winfrey before he entered politics with an unsuccessful bid for a Senate seat in 2022.
Oz is the latest of Trump's eye-catching nominations to key positions, including Fox News host Pete Hegseth to be defense secretary, vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health secretary and billionaire Elon Musk to head a government cost-cutting unit.
"America is facing a Healthcare Crisis and there may be no Physician more qualified and capable than Dr. Oz to Make America Healthy Again," the president-elect posted on his Truth Social platform.
The appointment puts a man whose health recommendations -- especially on Covid and weight loss -- have often been ridiculed by the medical community at the helm of the United States' Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).
As CMS administrator, Oz will be in charge of a federal agency that provides health coverage to more than 160 million Americans -- almost half the country's population.
It employs about 6,700 people, had outlays of $1.48 trillion last year and is one the largest purchasers of healthcare services in the world.
A son of Turkish immigrants, Oz has never held public office before, but has been a steadfast ally of Trump, who backed him in his unsuccessful Senate run in Pennsylvania.