Donald Trump's commerce secretary pick Howard Lutnick is a Wall ...

President-elect Donald Trump has named Howard Lutnick—the CEO known for his sharp-elbowed ascent to Wall Street’s upper echelon, as well as his resilience after the 9/11 attacks devastated his company—as his pick for secretary of commerce.

In the new role, Lutnick, who has cochaired Trump’s transition team, will lead the incoming administration’s strategy on tariffs and trade and maintain direct responsibility over the Office of the United States Trade Representative, Trump announced in a post on Truth Social on Tuesday.

Lutnick, a longtime New York power player, became president and CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, a Wall Street investment banking and financial services firm, in the early 1990s at just 29 years old.

Throughout Trump’s 2024 campaign, Lutnick—who has donated over $1 million to Trump’s super PAC and hosted a $15 million fundraiser at his Hamptons house this summer—has served as a top economic advisor.

Lutnick was one of the primary voices in Trump’s camp advocating for higher tariffs, in a bid to slash corporate taxes stateside and insulate U.S.-based business from competition overseas.

For months, many suspected Trump would tap Lutnick for Treasury secretary, a role that remains unfilled.

A representative for Lutnick did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.

Lutnick, 63, climbed the business ladder quickly, but he didn’t have an easy start: Both his parents had died by the time he was 18, leaving him and his two siblings to fend for themselves.

The New York native joined Cantor Fitzgerald as a bond trader shortly after graduating college and quickly formed a close mentor-mentee relationship with the firm’s founder, Bernard Cantor.

Eight years after joining, Lutnick was named Cantor Fitzgerald’s president and CEO—having reportedly “elbowed his way to the top” as Cantor was on his deathbed—and five years after that, he became chairman.

“There is no sugarcoating the fact that before, and even after, Sept. 11, Mr. Lutnick was widely disliked in the industry,” Susanne Craig wrote in the New York Times in 2011. “A ruthless competitor even by Wall Street standards, he has made more than a few enemies over the years. In 1996, as Mr. Cantor, his mentor, lay dying, Mr. Lutnick fought with Mr. Cantor’s wife, Iris, for control of Cantor Fitzgerald. She later barred him from the funeral.”

Cantor Fitzgerald was brutalized by the 9/11 attacks. The firm was headquartered on the 101st through 105th floors of the World Trade Center’s North Tower; the hijacked flight hit floors 93 through 99, leaving those on the Cantor floors with no way of escaping.