The Buzzards of Wall Street & Capitol Hill
Secretary Lutnick bets our future on Tariffs, His Sons Offer Bets Against Them
United States Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick ran Cantor Fitzgerald for 30 years before having the honor of being appointed by President Trump to be United States Secretary of Commerce and help architect the “Liberation Day” tariffs regime that has roiled markets, torn up free trade agreements, and managed to find a new way for the government to exorbitantly tax us without our approval — well, new since the 1930s at least.
Being granted this great honor came with a price, however. Mr. Lutnick had to give up control of his beloved financial service company. Following the President’s lead, he turned Cantor Fitzgerald to his two sons, Kyle and Brandon thus freeing him of any ethical conflicts — under 2025 MAGA rules anyway. As Speaker Johnson obviously believes, as long as we can the corruption it’s not a problem in the halls of Congress.
Meanwhile, conservatives like former Virginia Governor George Allen and libertarians like Scalia School of Law Professor Ilya Somin have been successfully fighting the tariff regime in court. The United States Court of International Trade has unanimously ruled the tariffs illegal and the en banc appeal of the ruling is set to be heard by the Federal Circuit at the end of the month.
While this legal battle plays out and Papa Lutnick cheerleads, his sons running his firm seems to be offering several hundred million in bets on whether tariffs are as illegal as the legal community and Constitutional scholars say they are.
