I’ll bet that Michael Waltz is breathing a sigh of relief right now, because Howard Lutnick has managed to eclipse even his epic SignalGate screw up from a few weeks ago. All eyes are now on Lutnick and the stock market. Lutnick let the cat out of the bag. Trump has the market yo yo-ing so that he and his billionaire buddies can clean up from insider trading tips. So, in that vein, before Trump went off golfing and to the UFC match in Miami this weekend, he announced that there was a tariff exemption on technical products. Now Lutnick blows the whistle and says it’s “temporary.” This is a problem.
It's probably just an issue of timing – they meant to catch the bid up in Monday's market from the exemption announcement and sell before he made his comment to tank it again
— PetertheBorr (@PetertheBorr) April 13, 2025
Voila. That sounds like the plan and certainly that behavior would match what we saw last week in the market. But Howard had to go shooting off his mouth and now what Gasparino predicts, the markets opening down, will most likely happen. It’s way too early to see what the overseas markets are doing but that’s a call that makes a lot of sense. And it will only cement Lutnick’s stature as most hated member of Trump’s cabinet.
Lutnick is loathed for two reasons. The first is that he defeated efforts by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and National Economic Council chair Kevin Hassett to limit the size and scope of Trump’s tariffs, which, if we’re lucky, will tip the U.S. economy into a recession. (If we’re unlucky, the tariffs will tip the global economy into a depression.) The second reason Trump officials hate Lutnick is that nobody thinks he actually believes the hooey he spouts in furtherance of a maximalist tariff policy. In an administration overflowing with sycophants, no nose is burrowed more deeply inside Trump’s gluteus maximus than Lutnick’s.
Lutnick “is constantly auditioning for Trump’s approval,” a person identified as being “close to the administration” told Politico on March 11. “He’s trying to be a mini-Trump.” According to Politico, “White House and administration officials” were “growing increasingly frustrated with Lutnick” because of his “abrasive personality” and frequent TV appearances that showed “a lack of understanding of even the basics about how tariffs and the economy work.” Lutnick elbowed aside even the rabid White House trade hawk Peter Navarro, Politico said, not to mention the actual U.S. trade representative, Jamieson Greer, becoming Capitol Hill’s “go-to contact person on tariffs.” (It is Greer, however, who is set to testify Tuesday before the House Ways and Means Committee.) […]
Trump named Lutnick co-chair of his transition (with Linda McMahon, now education secretary), and in that capacity Lutnick pushed hard to become treasury secretary. “He’s following the Cheney model,” one transition official told CNN, a reference to when Dick Cheney, whom candidate George W. Bush asked in 2000 to find a running mate, chose himself. Musk went on Twitter to promote Lutnick for the Treasury, disparaging Lutnick’s competitor for the job, Scott Bessent, as “a business-as usual choice.” Lutnick, Musk said, “will actually enact change.”
Be careful what you wish for! Musk is expressing mounting disagreement with the tariff policy. This past weekend, he attacked Navarro (but not Lutnick) on X and posted a Milton Friedman video that explains the global nature of supply chains. Navarro replied by saying Musk “doesn’t understand” trade.
Lutnick, meanwhile, appeared Sunday on CBS News’s Face the Nation to defend the tariffs. “We’ve got to start to protect ourselves,” Lutnick said, “and we’ve got to stop having all the countries of the world ripping us off. We have a $1.2 trillion trade deficit, and the rest of the world has a surplus with us. They’re earning our money. They’re taking our money, and Donald Trump has seen this, and he’s going to stop it.”
Does Lutnick truly believe it’s good policy to impose high tariffs based on the size of trade deficits (rather than the trade practices of individual nations)? Does he think it’s good policy to slap a 10 percent tariff on everybody? Even if these actions crash the stock market? (The Dow dropped another 349 points Monday.) Probably he does not. CNN reported last month that “Lutnick’s own views on trade are more nuanced than his salesmanship would suggest” and that “privately” he’s told friends he was “not thrilled” by Trump’s impulsiveness on trade. If that’s what Lutnick believed before Liberation Day, then imagine the disparity now between Lutnick’s relentless public maximalism and whatever he tells intimates.
In other words, Lutnick is not an idiot. He just plays one on TV and in the Oval Office to please the leader of the free world. If anybody is to take the fall for the economic wreckage Trump’s creating, everybody’s rooting for it to be Lutnick. But Lutnick still dreams of becoming treasury secretary, and there are rumors that Bessent (who can’t summon Lutnick-like enthusiasm in shilling for this policy) wants out. Almost nobody inside the White House (much less outside it) can bear to contemplate that the oleaginous Lutnick will become Trump’s actual emissary to Wall Street. But given the scrambled mental state of our commander in chief, don’t rule it out.
So many idiots vying for “top idiot” status!
It would be laughable if it wasn’t so sick and dangerous.