United States Under Secretary of Commerce

A United States under secretary of commerce is one of several positions in the United States Department of Commerce, serving under the United States Secretary of Commerce.

Seal of the United States Department of Commerce

History

In June 1939, Edward J. Noble was appointed the first under secretary of commerce^[1] a role created especially for him by President Franklin D. Roosevelt that had a salary of $10,000 per year.^[2] He was succeeded by Wayne Chatfield-Taylor, the former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury who later served as president of the Export-Import Bank.^[3] The role was later held by various prominent people, including Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney (under President Truman),^[4] and Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr. (under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson), when the job had a salary of $21,000 per year.^[5][6] On December 13, 1979, President Jimmy Carter replaced the role of under secretary, which was then held by Luther H. Hodges Jr., with United States Deputy Secretary of Commerce, and Hodges became the first holder.^[7]

Transportation

In 1950, President Truman proposed transferring the functions of the Maritime Commission to the Department of Commerce to be led by the newly created Under Secretary of Commerce for Transportation.^[8] Truman had created Civil Aeronautics Administration and transferred the Bureau of Public Roads within the department the previous year. In 1966, all transportation activities of Commerce were moved to the newly established United States Department of Transportation, which was led by former Under Secretary Alan Stephenson Boyd.^[9]

Current positions

The under secretary positions are:^[10]

• Under Secretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs (created June 16, 1982)^[11]
• Under Secretary of Commerce for Industry and Security (created 2001)
• Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property (created January 17, 2001)
• Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade (created January 1, 1989)
• Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere (created December 1971)
• Under Secretary of Commerce for Standards and Technology (created 2010)
• Under Secretary of Commerce for Minority Business Development (created 2022)

Former under secretaries

List of former under secretaries of commerce

Image	Name[12]	Term began	Term ended	President(s) served under
	Edward J. Noble	1939	1940	Franklin D. Roosevelt
	Wayne Chatfield-Taylor	1940	1945
	Alfred Schindler	1945	1946	Harry S. Truman
	William Chapman Foster	1946[13][14]	1948[15]
	Charles W. Sawyer	1948	1949
	Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney	1949[16]	1950
	W. Walter Williams	1952[17]	1958	Dwight D. Eisenhower
	Philip A. Ray	1959[18]	1961
	Edward Gudeman	1961[19]	1963[20]	John F. Kennedy
	Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr.	1963	1965	John F. Kennedy Lyndon B. Johnson
	LeRoy Collins	1965	1966	Lyndon B. Johnson
	John Herbert Hollomon Jr.	1967[21]	1967
	Howard J. Samuels	1967	1969
	Joseph W. Bartlett	1968[22]	1969
	Rocco C. Siciliano	1969[23]	1971[24][25]	Richard Nixon
	James Thomas Lynn	1971[26]	1973
	John K. Tabor	1973[27]	1975[28]	Gerald Ford
	James Baker	1975[29]	1976
	Edward O. Vetter	1976[30]	1977
	Sidney Harman	1977	1978	Jimmy Carter
	Luther H. Hodges Jr.	1978[31]	1979

List of former under secretaries of commerce for transportation

Image	Name[12]	Term began	Term ended	President(s) served under
	Philip B. Fleming	1950[32]	1951[33]	Harry S. Truman
	Delos W. Rentzel	1951[33]	1951[34]
	Jack Garrett Scott	1952[35][36]	1953[37]
	Robert B. Murray Jr.	1953[38]	1955	Dwight D. Eisenhower
	Louis S. Rothschild	1955[39]	1958[12]
	John J. Allen Jr.	1959	1961
	Clarence D. Martin Jr.	1961	1965[40]	John F. Kennedy Lyndon B. Johnson
	Alan Stephenson Boyd	1965[41]	1966	Lyndon B. Johnson