MONEY TALKS

Howard Lutnick, Trump's tariff czar, wants the rest of the world to pay up.

- BY ANTONIA HITCHENS

One trade negotiator assessed Lutnick's approach as "Don't try to make this anything but what it is, which is a shakedown."

When Howard Lutnick moved to Washington, earlier this year, to become the Secretary of Commerce, he painted one wall in his new living room gold. It was the only significant modification he made to the house, a château-style mansion purchased for twenty-five million dollars from the Fox News anchor Bret Baier. On a recent Sunday afternoon, Lutnick was in the living room, flipping through a commemorative coffee-table book designed by his family which pairs photographs of him with some of his favorite sayings. "It's between me and the mirror," one read. He turned the page: "You are either in or you are out." Lutnick's dog, a Havanese-poodle mix named Cali—three of his four children went to college in California—kept nosing her way through a gate to come sit with us. Lutnick was about to fly to London for a round of trade negotiations with China, whose restrictions on the sale of rare-earth metals were threatening to render parts of the American economy nonfunctional. Several suitcases were packed and waiting in the entryway, next to a gold Pop-art sculpture by Robert Indiana that spelled the word "LOVE." Later, Lutnick led me from room to room to point out a few more works from his personal collection: Rothko, Diebenkorn, Lichtenstein, de Kooning.

A staffer gently reminded Lutnick that he had to leave for the airport, but he was in the middle of a story. Lutnick's anecdotes, much like those of his boss, tend to meander. A billionaire who became the head of a major bond-trading firm at twenty-nine, he radiates a brash, ebullient energy that is often referred to as "scrappy" or "outer borough." He likes to dish. He talks with his hands and emphasizes his points with catchphrases such as "How about no" or "How about we don't."