He's the face of Trump's tariffs. But 9/11 attacks put Howard Lutnick on the national stage

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Howard Lutnick took his five-year-old son to school for his first day of kindergarten, causing the Wall Street CEO to be a little late getting to work at his World Trade Center office in New York City.

That delay ended up saving the life of Lutnick, who is now the U.S. commerce secretary and has become a leading figure in the current trade war with Canada.

But on 9/11, every one of his 658 employees at the investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald who were at the office that morning, including Lutnick's younger brother Gary, were killed when 1 WTC, the North Tower, was deliberately struck by hijacked American Airlines Flight 11. At the time, the firm had 960 employees based in New York.

Two days later, a grief-stricken and weeping Lutnick appeared on television, interviewed by then-ABC News journalist Connie Chung. Breaking down several times during the interview, Lutnick described how he went from hospital to hospital, searching for employees still unaccounted for.

"I don't go to a hospital or get anyone to go to any hospital and say, 'Find Gary Lutnick for me,'" he said. "I go with employee lists and say, 'Here' my list, here's everybody I got, find somebody on this list. I don't care who they are.'"

Suffered personal, professional losses

Following the broadcast, Lutnick made other media appearances, most notably on CNN with Larry King, and became somewhat of a national figure, representing just one of those who had suffered both personal and professional losses.

His image then certainly contrasts with the one Canadians see now — the confident pitchman for U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs against Canadian exports to the United States.

Since the Feb. 1 announcement by Trump of 25 per cent tariffs on all goods from Canada and Mexico going to the U.S., Lutnick — whose responsibilities as commerce secretary include imposing trade restrictions — has been making the rounds of U.S. media networks, blasting Canada for not doing enough to stop the flow of fentanyl, singing the praises of tariffs but also hinting there could be some potential exemptions or compromises.

(On Thursday, Trump announced he was pausing tariffs on some Canadian goods until April 2.)

But even before Lutnick became commerce secretary, he had been an outspoken supporter of Trump's tariff plan, and as part  of Trump's inner circle, co-chair of his transition team.

When he was appointed commerce secretary, Lutnick stepped down as CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, where, according to its website, he led the firm for four decades and rebuilt it after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

At that time, the firm had offices among the top five floors of the 110-storey North Tower. When the plane flew into floors 93 to 99 of the tower at 8:46 a.m., it trapped those people who worked above.

'We lost every person in our office'

Lutnick's company lost more employees than any other firm in 9/11 — more than two-thirds of its workforce and more than a third of the total killed at the North Tower.

Lutnick said that when he was at his son's school that morning, his phone kept ringing and disconnecting.

"I later learned it was my brother Gary trying to call to say goodbye," he said in a social media post last Sept 11, commemorating the attacks.

He also discovered that his brother had called their sister and told her "he wasn't going to make it and the smoke was coming in and things were bad," he recounted to King, sobbing.

"And he called and said goodbye and that he loved her and for her to tell me that he, that he loved me."

Happy birthday to Gary, my spectacular brother. I lost you on 9/11, but you will be missed and loved forever. pic.twitter.com/jcRIC0QMCG

— Howard Lutnick (@howardlutnick) November 4, 2024

Lutnick said when he eventually arrived at the building, he watched people fleeing and would "grab and shake them," asking what floor they were on, hoping to find someone from floors 101 to 105, where Cantor Fitzgerald's offices were located, he told Chung.

"I knew if I got one employee, if one person came down from that floor, that I know that there had to be others," he said.

Lutnick made contact with someone fleeing the building from the 91st floor, but nothing higher. He was then forced to run as the second World Trade Center tower began to collapse after being struck by another plane.

He said he tried to get ahead of the  giant plume of smoke but was knocked down underneath a truck. He was completely covered in dust and just walked for hours, eventually calling his wife, he said.

Faced backlash for cutting off paycheques

That emotional and compelling interview with Chung engendered widespread sympathy, as it was jarring for the public to see the CEO of a Wall Street firm break down.

Yet that sympathy was short-lived. Lutnick soon faced immense scorn when it was learned that just days after the attacks, he had cut off the paycheques of those employees who at the time were missing and presumed dead.

That backlash included criticism from some of the widows of those employees. Chung did a followup story, this time interviewing some of the widows who were angry with Lutnick's salary termination.

"Don't expect these women to cry for Lutnick," Chung reported. "Days after the tragedy, he did something they can neither forgive nor forget."

Lutnick at the time acknowledged he was getting inquires from widows asking about the salary for their husbands.

"They call me and they say, 'How come you can't pay my salary? Why can't you pay my husband's salary? Other companies pay their [dead and missing employees'] salary, why can't you,'" he told CNN's King.

"But, you see, I lost everybody in the company, so I can't pay their salary. They think we're doing something wrong. I can't pay their salaries," Lutnick said, again weeping.

Yet he defended that decision to cut off the paycheques and insisted he had no choice.

"I needed my bankers to know that I was in control," Lutnick told the New York Times in a 2011 interview. "That I wasn't sentimental and that I was no less motivated or driven to make my business survive."

He made good on his pledge to provide the families with 25 per cent of the firm's profits over the next five years — totalling $180 million US —and pay for their health care for the next 10 years.

Meanwhile, some of the family members who had been critical of Lutnick reversed their opinion and offered praise for his efforts.