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Lutnick Testifies at His Senate Commerce Confirmation Hearing, Jan. 29, 2025

January 29, 2025 · LiveNOW from FOX · 3:19:20

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What happened

Howard Lutnick testified before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation on January 29, 2025, as President Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Commerce, in LiveNOW from FOX’s live carry of the hearing. Vice President JD Vance introduced him to the committee. Lutnick, the longtime chairman and CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, told the committee his plan was “to only serve the American people”: he would divest — sell all of his interests, all of his business interests and assets — under the agreement he had reached with the Office of Government Ethics, divesting within 90 days of his confirmation, as he stated it.

Trade was the center of the hearing. Lutnick argued that other countries treat the United States poorly — higher tariffs, non-tariff barriers and subsidies — and that “we can use tariffs to create reciprocity, fairness and respect,” pledging that the administration would help America’s farmers, ranchers and fishermen flourish, as he put it. Pressed by Senator Baldwin on whether he could commit that prices would not go up, Lutnick answered that he could commit the economy would be much better, and called the claim that tariffs cause inflation “nonsense,” pointing to high-tariff countries without inflation, as the exchange was carried by C-SPAN. Senators also pressed him on export controls and China’s artificial-intelligence advance following the DeepSeek release, and on his firm’s relationship with the stablecoin issuer Tether, which Senator Warren had raised in a letter to the committee the day before, as reported at the time.

Why it matters

The hearing is the founding statement of Lutnick’s tenure: the President had assigned him the tariff and trade agenda with direct responsibility for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, and the nominee used the hearing to define that agenda as reciprocity enforced by tariffs. The divestment commitment — a full sale of his Cantor Fitzgerald and related interests within 90 days — is the ethics record against which his tenure is measured, and the contested exchanges on prices and Tether are the attributed criticism carried with the nomination.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard watch: Lutnick’s confirmation commitments as he stated them on January 29, 2025 — full divestment of his business interests within 90 days of confirmation, and tariffs used to create reciprocity, fairness and respect for American producers. Flagged for the scoreboard editor as promise-record material; no entry is published from this page.

Sources: LiveNOW from FOX, “FULL HEARING: Howard Lutnick confirmation hearing for Commerce Secretary” (live carry, Jan. 29, 2025, embedded above; testimony as delivered by Mr. Lutnick and members of the committee). Alternate carries of the same hearing (PBS NewsHour; The Hill) are recorded in the site index, not separately paged.