01/29/2025 at 10:00AM
U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, will convene a nomination hearing for Howard Lutnick, President Donald Trump’s nominee to be U.S. Secretary of Commerce.
Nominee:
- Howard Lutnick, of New York, to be Secretary of Commerce.
The largest agency in the Department of Commerce is the 12,000-employee National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Project 2025 calls for the breakup of NOAA and the privatization of weather forecasts.
In recent public interviews, Lutnick has reflected Trump’s positions on the Biden administration’s climate law, saying in an interview on Fox News last month that the Inflation Reduction Act should be called the “Inflation Creation Act.”
“You just pump this money out, eggs get more expensive, french fries, right?” said Lutnick. “It’s a hosing of America, and we’ve got to stop it.”
During an interview in late October, Lutnick called for cutting billions from agencies, including the Interior Department, which he said should more rightly be called the “department of all the land and mineral rights of the United States of America.”
Among the companies that Cantor Fitzgerald has invested in that have benefited significantly from the IRA are Invenergy, a renewable energy firm that is the top constituent of the Cantor Fitzgerald Infrastructure Fund.
The infrastructure fund has over $150 million in total net assets, according to a July press release, and its investment in Invenergy consists of 14.65% of that fund’s total investments. The fund is also heavily invested in NextEra Energy, the largest U.S. renewable energy developer.