President Donald Trump phones Howard Lutnick almost every night after the commerce secretary goes to bed around 1 a.m.—sometimes merely to gossip, talk about sport or seek feedback on his media appearances.
The bizarre habit was revealed by Lutnick himself in a lengthy profile by The New Yorker, which also cited sources within Trump’s orbit variously describing the gregarious Cabinet minister as “an errand boy”; a “non-stop” talker; and someone without the smarts of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
Lutnick, the former chair and chief executive of U.S. financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald, was appointed commerce secretary in February after unsuccessfully lobbying for the more prestigious Treasury role.
But despite mixed views on his performance so far, he views himself as Trump’s dealmaker in chief, telling The New Yorker: “I’m just experienced in business in the way none of these people are—except Donald Trump.”
“I know him so well that I know where the puck is going,” he added.
Lutnick also reportedly speaks to the president before he goes to sleep every night, sometimes about “real stuff” like tariffs, but also about “nothing”, such as “sporting events, people, who’d you have dinner with, what was this guy like, can you believe what this guy did, what’s the TV like, I saw this on TV, what’d you think of what this guy said on TV, what did you think about my press conference, how about this Truth?”
“Trump has other people he calls late at night,” Lutnick added.
But the 62-year-old was also on the receiving end of Trump’s wrath over the so-called “reciprocal tariffs” announced on April 2, which the president had promised would “Liberate America.”
The tariffs were formulated on a bizarre and widely ridiculed calculation, which involved taking the trade deficit for the U.S. in goods with a particular country, divided by the total goods imported from that country and then dividing that number by two. In other words, they were not actually “reciprocal” at all.
According to The New Yorker, “Trump called Lutnick in a rage, wanting to know how the tariff amounts had been determined. Lutnick himself wasn’t certain. Trump told Lutnick to go on TV and defend them anyway. Lutnick would take the fall, even if he didn’t really know what had happened.”
The profile is an insight into the commerce secretary, who knew Trump from his time at Cantor Fitzgerald and was once a contestant on his reality TV show, Celebrity Apprentice.
After voting for Hillary Clinton in 2016, the New York businessman backed Trump against Biden in 2020 and was a key fundraiser for him last year before Trump appointed him co-chair of his presidential transition team.
Since then, Lutnick has been a vigorous defender of Trump’s tariff policies but has occasionally come under fire for his inconsistent and bombastic messaging.
Last month, he even baffled Republican senators during a hearing in Congress when he didn’t appear to know some of his own trade laws.
The billionaire is regularly seen at the White House, where Trump has publicly described him as “someone with a great business instinct”.
Last week, the president spent the evening with Lutnick at a private dinner celebrating his birthday at the $25 million Washington home he purchased from the Fox News anchor Bret Baier.
Others, however, are less convinced by Lutnick’s acumen.
“It’s obvious why Lutnick’s affect appeals to Trump,” one unnamed source was quoted as saying in The New Yorker profile. “But it’s Bessent’s presence in the administration that reassures us there is someone smart looking out for us.”
Another insider was even more brutal. “He’s not seen as a real actor,” they said. “He’s an errand boy.”
