President-elect Donald Trump is expected to nominate Exxon Mobil Corp. Chief Executive Rex Tillerson to be secretary of state, a transition official said Saturday, a selection that would reach outside the traditional foreign policy establishment to elevate a global business deal-maker.<\/p>\n
Mr. Trump hasn’t yet made a final decision, the official said, but the president-elect heaped praise on Mr. Tillerson in an interview released Saturday.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s more than a business executive; he\u2019s a world-class player,\u2019\u2019 Mr. Trump told Fox News in the interview, to be broadcast Sunday. \u201cHe\u2019s in charge of I guess the largest company in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr. Trump called it \u201ca great advantage\u201d that Mr. Tillerson already knows \u201cmany of the players,\u201d noting that he does \u201cmassive deals in Russia.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those deals would be certain to come under scrutiny in confirmation hearings before the Senate. A number of Republicans have urged Mr. Trump to be wary of Russia, warning that it is trying to expand its influence in ways that run counter to U.S. interests in places such as Ukraine and Syria.<\/p>\n
The nomination would also put Mr. Trump\u2019s intentions toward Russia in the spotlight just as controversy is intensifying over reports that the Central Intelligence Agency has concluded that a Russian-led hacking effort of U.S. email accounts was intended to boost Mr. Trump\u2019s election chances.<\/p>\n
Mr. Tillerson, 64 years old, met privately with Mr. Trump on Saturday, four days after their first meeting.<\/p>\n
Among those considered for the post, Mr. Tillerson has perhaps the closest ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, having negotiated a 2011 energy partnership deal with Russia that Mr. Putin said could eventually be worth as much as $500 billion. In 2012, the Kremlin bestowed the country\u2019s Order of Friendship decoration on Mr. Tillerson.<\/p>\n
This pre-existing relationship with Mr. Putin complements Mr. Trump\u2019s push to improve U.S.-Russia ties.<\/p>\n
Since Mr. Trump began vetting candidates for secretary of state, Mr. Tillerson\u2019s stock has climbed steadily. He moved ahead of better-known hopefuls with established political credentials\u2014including 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney \u2014who had multiple conversations with Mr. Trump about the job. Mr. Tillerson is viewed by some of Mr. Trump\u2019s advisers as a mold-breaking pick who would bring an executive\u2019s experience to the diplomatic role, said a person involved in the process.<\/p>\n
Tapping Mr. Tillerson for the job would be a \u201cTrumpian\u201d move, the transition official said.<\/p>\n
Mr. Trump is expected to make a formal announcement about his State Department pick in the coming days.<\/p>\n
An Exxon spokesman declined to comment.<\/p>\n
Mr. Trump said in a statement on Friday that former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani had taken himself out of the running for the diplomatic job and other administration posts late last month.<\/p>\n
With Mr. Trump\u2019s decision not yet final, other candidates who remain in the running, apart from Mr. Romney, are former Central Intelligence Agency director David Petraeus, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, and U.S. Sen. Bob Corker (R., Tenn.), people familiar with the matter said.<\/p>\n
If Mr. Trump selects Mr. Tillerson, it would add a seasoned business executive to a team that already includes three retired generals. As Exxon\u2019s CEO since 2006, Mr. Tillerson could leverage existing relationships with numerous world leaders.<\/p>\n
0:00 \/ 0:00
\nPresident-elect Donald Trump has expanded the circle of candidates that could be named secretary of state including ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson. WSJ’s Lee Hawkins explains. Photo: AP
\nExxon has a large global presence, and this could introduce sticky conflicts of interest if Mr. Tillerson is selected. The company explores for oil and gas on six of the world\u2019s continents and has operations in more than 50 countries.<\/p>\n
Mr. Tillerson, who is slated to retire next year, has retirement funds worth tens of millions of dollars, a value that could potentially be affected by State Department activities. For example, he could benefit from such potential department actions as the lifting of sanctions on Russia.<\/p>\n
Democrats signaled that they would raise such issues in a confirmation hearing. Sen. Bob Menendez (D., N.J.), a Foreign Relations Committee member, said Mr. Tillerson would bring a number of conflicts of interest to the job and called his expected nomination \u201calarming and absurd,\u201d offering Russia \u201ca willing accomplice in the president\u2019s cabinet guiding our nation\u2019s foreign policy.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Obama administration and European allies have imposed several rounds of economic sanctions against Russia following its annexation of Crimea in 2014. The Obama administration also has accused the Kremlin of backing militants in eastern Ukraine even after the annexation of Crimea.<\/p>\n
As Exxon\u2019s CEO, Mr. Tillerson has spoken against sanctions on Russia. Mr. Tillerson\u2019s work there dates to when Mr. Putin rose to power after Boris Yeltsin\u2019s resignation.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe always encourage the people who are making those decisions to consider the very broad collateral damage of who are they really harming with sanctions,\u201d he said at the company\u2019s annual meeting in May 2014.<\/p>\n
Mr. Tillerson grew up in Texas and in 1975 joined Exxon, where he has spent his entire career. He has long been closely affiliated with Republican politicians and the Boy Scouts of America, but he has never worked in government.<\/p>\n
While unusual, the choice of a corporate leader as secretary of state wouldn\u2019t be unprecedented. George Shultz was the executive vice president of engineering giant Bechtel before he became secretary of state under President Ronald Reagan, though Mr. Shultz had been in government in a prior administration.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Source: \u00a0<\/strong>wsj.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" President-elect Donald Trump is expected to nominate Exxon Mobil Corp. Chief Executive Rex Tillerson to be secretary of state, a transition official said Saturday, a selection that would reach outside the traditional foreign policy establishment to elevate a global business deal-maker. Mr. Trump hasn’t yet made a final decision, the official said, but the president-elect heaped praise on Mr. Tillerson… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=375"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":376,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375\/revisions\/376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}