Andrew Puzder
Andrew Franklin Puzder is an American attorney, author, and businessman who has served as United States Ambassador to the European Union since 2025.
Puzder worked as a commercial trial lawyer in private practice from 1978 to 1995, handling many high-profile cases and being active in the anti-abortion movement. He was chief executive officer of CKE Restaurants, the parent company of Hardee's and Carl's Jr., from September 2000 to March 2017. While holding this position, he was nominated on December 8, 2016, by then-President-elect Donald Trump to serve as Secretary of Labor. After it came out that he had kept an illegal immigrant as his housekeeper, paying no taxes on her work, Puzder, who also faced criticism for his company’s treatment of its workers, withdrew on February 15, 2017, for want of votes needed for his confirmation.
On January 22, 2025, President Trump announced his nomination of Puzder to serve as United States Ambassador to the European Union in his second administration. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on August 2, 2025. He presented his credentials on September 11, 2025.
Puzder is a frequent commentator on economic and political issues. He co-authored a book entitled Job Creation: How It Really Works and Why Government Doesn't Understand It. After withdrawing as Secretary of Labor nominee, Puzder published his second book, The Capitalist Comeback: The Trump Boom and the Left's Plot to Stop It, in 2018.
Early life and education
Puzder was born on July 11, 1950, in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of Winifred M. and Andrew Frank Puzder, a car salesman. He grew up in a working class community in Russell Township.Earning his way through college and law school, while supporting his family by working construction, landscaping, and painting houses, he attended Kent State University, but later dropped out in 1970 to play guitar and perform in bands.
Puzder would later move to Cleveland Heights where he managed a guitar studio while attending Cleveland State University, receiving a BA in history in 1975. He then attended Washington University School of Law where he was the senior editor of the Washington University Law Quarterly, receiving his JD in 1978. Puzder would become the first in his family to graduate from college.
Career
Early legal career
From 1978 to 1991, Puzder was a commercial trial lawyer in St. Louis at the law offices of famed attorney Morris Shenker, whom he represented in various matters from 1978 to 1984. In 1984 he moved to the Stolar Partnership where he worked with trial attorney Charles A. Seigel from 1984 to 1991. During this time he also served as a trial lawyer in St. Louis and was involved in a number of high-profile cases until 1997.Anti-abortion movement
During the 1980s and early 1990s, Puzder was considered Missouri's leading anti-abortion lawyer and was active in the anti-abortion advocacy group Lawyers for Life. In 1984, Puzder and another lawyer wrote an article for the Stetson Law Review proposing a Missouri law that would define life as beginning at conception in the broad context of contract or property law. Working with St. Louis area Congresswoman Ann Wagner's mother-in-law, Puzder reasoned that if fetuses were recognized as having rights in other contexts, it would establish a foundation for challenging Roe v. Wade later on.It would also influence one section of Missouri House Bill 1596, an abortion law prohibiting the use of state money for abortions and declaring that life begins at conception. Following a challenge, the Supreme Court in 1989 upheld the law in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services. The watershed decision opened the door for new state-level restrictions on abortion.
Following the Webster decision in 1990, Puzder authored a commentary article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that "called on his colleagues and abortion-rights supporters to work together for new laws to help pregnant women and their children." BJ Isaacson Jones, the Director of Reproductive Health Services, contacted him and they began talking about areas where they could find common ground in an effort to help women and children. Their common ground efforts grew into a national organization known as the Common Ground Network for Life and Choice with the objective of helping "activists get beyond their differences and, together, help pregnant women." The Network had an office in Washington DC and held two national conferences. In 1995, Puzder and Isaacson-Jones co-authored a pamphlet entitled Adoption as Common Ground and Isaacson Jones opened an adoption agency in the clinic.
In July 1989, Puzder was appointed chair of the Task Force for Mothers and Unborn Children by Missouri Governor John Ashcroft. After The Riverfront Times published an article detailing allegations that he had abused his wife, he offered up his resignation to the Governor, which the Governor later rejected.
His former wife subsequently "fully" withdrew those allegations in 1990 and has been adamant that Puzder was "not abusive" and that she would "most definitely confirm to anyone who may ask that in no way was there abuse." In a letter dated Jan. 18, 2017 that she sent to Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and Sen. Patty Murray, she stated: "Let me be clear. Andy is not and was not abusive or violent. He is a good, loving, kind man and a deeply committed and loving father." She acknowledged that she was "misled by faulty advice of someone I trusted" and noted that "he fact that my attorney used 'adult abuse' as a vehicle to gain leverage in our divorce proceedings has haunted me as well as our children to this day."
Puzder left the task force a few months later because of workload according to St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
CKE Restaurants
Puzder represented Carl Karcher, the founder of the Carl's Jr. quick-service restaurant chain, while practicing law in St. Louis. Karcher was under investigation into insider trading by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC filed suit saying that Karcher had told several relatives to sell their stock ahead of a poor earnings report. In July 1989, Karcher paid $664,000 to settle the case. Puzder organized a transaction in which Karcher would sell a stake in his company to William P. Foley, the chairman and CEO of Fidelity National Financial. In 1991, Karcher asked Puzder to move to Orange County, California and become his personal attorney and Puzder did so. Puzder has been credited with resolving Karcher's financial dilemma, allowing Karcher to avoid bankruptcy and retain a significant ownership interest in the company he founded, CKE Restaurants, Inc.. Puzder was a partner in the Costa Mesa-based law firm Lewis, D'Amato, Brisbois & Bisgaard from September 1991 to March 1994, and a shareholder in Stradling Yocca Carlson & Rauth from March 1994 to 1995.In 1993, Foley became chairman and CEO of CKE Restaurants and Karcher became chairman emeritus. In January 1995, Puzder became executive vice president and general counsel for Fidelity, managing one of the largest corporate legal departments in the country until June 2000. Puzder also worked with Foley to create Santa Barbara Restaurant Group, a conglomerate of restaurant chains that was purchased by CKE in 2002. Puzder served as the company's CEO.
In 1997, Puzder was also named executive vice president and general counsel for CKE and CKE purchased the Hardee's quick-service restaurant brand. The transaction burdened CKE with $700 million in debt. The company underperformed and its market capitalization dropped to about $200 million. Faced with serious financial and operational issues, CKE's Board of Directors named Puzder as president and CEO of Hardee's Food Systems in June 2000 and named him president and CEO of CKE Restaurants, Inc. in September of that year. Puzder is credited with turning around both the Hardee's brand and CKE, allowing the company to survive, become financially secure and return to growth.