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United States President-elect Donald Trump has tapped billionaire businessman Howard Lutnick, wrestling mogul Linda McMahon, and celebrity surgeon Mehmet Oz as his respective picks for secretary of commerce, secretary of education and administrator of Medicare and Medicaid.
In a statement on Tuesday, Trump hailed Lutnick, the CEO of the investment firm Cantor Fitzgerald and co-chair of the Republican’s transition team, as “a dynamic force on Wall Street for more than 30 years”.
“He will lead our tariff and trade agenda, with additional direct responsibility for the Office of the United States Trade Representative,” Trump said.
If confirmed, Lutnick would oversee 12 bureaus and nearly 47,000 employees that handle tasks ranging from funding domestic chip production to crafting trade restrictions and releasing economic statistics.
Lutnick, a major advocate for Trump on Wall Street, is known for his hawkish views on China and strong support of tariffs, describing them as an “amazing tool” to “protect the American worker”.
Trump said that McMahon, the former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, would empower parents to make educational decisions for their children and make the US “number one” in education.
“We will send education back to the states, and Linda will spearhead that effort,” Trump said in a statement.
McMahon led the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first term and made two unsuccessful runs for the US Senate in Connecticut.
During his election campaign, Trump pledged to eliminate the federal Department of Education and cut funding for “any school pushing Critical Race Theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children”.
Trump said Oz, popularly known as Dr Oz from his time hosting a daytime talk show that ran from 2009 to 2022, was an “eminent physician” and “world-class communicator” who had been at the “forefront of healthy living for decades”.
Trump said Oz would “cut waste and fraud” and work closely with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s pick for health and human services secretary, to “take on the illness industrial complex, and all the horrible chronic diseases left in its wake”.
As administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Oz, a heart surgeon and the son of Turkish immigrants, would have responsibility for overseeing healthcare programs that cover more than 150 million Americans.
Trump’s latest nominations continue a trend of naming close allies and loyalists to key posts since his victory over Democrat Kamala Harris.
The Republican’s picks have also reinforced expectations that he will pursue a sharper version of his nationalistic “America First” agenda during his second term.
Trump has promised to slap tariffs of 10 to 20 percent on all imports as well as a 60 percent tariff on goods coming specifically from China, which the US views as one of its top geopolitical rivals.
Researchers at the Peterson Institute for International Economics said in August that a 20-percent tariff across the board alongside a 60-percent tariff on China “would cost a typical US household in the middle of the income distribution more than $2,600 a year”.
But Trump and allies such as Lutnick have portrayed the tariffs policy as a key tool to bring back jobs and manufacturing from overseas.
Speaking at a Trump campaign rally last month at New York’s Madison Square Garden, Lutnick said the US has been “letting the rest of the world eat our lunch”.
“And it is time to Make America Great Again,” he shouted.
Earlier in his speech, Lutnick said the first reason to re-elect Trump, however, was “because we must crush jihad”.
Before Tuesday’s nomination, Lutnick had been considered for secretary of the US Treasury, a role that has been at the centre of high-profile jockeying within the Trump world.
Billionaire Elon Musk and others in Trump’s orbit had called on the president-elect to dump the previous frontrunner for Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, in favour of Lutnick.
“Bessent is a business-as-usual choice, whereas [Lutnick] will actually enact change,” Musk wrote in a social media post on Saturday.
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