Rex Tillerson

Rex Wayne Tillerson (born March 23, 1952) is an American energy executive and former diplomat who served as the 69th United States secretary of state from 2017 to 2018 in the first administration of Donald Trump. From 2006 to 2016, he was chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of ExxonMobil.

Tillerson began his career as a civil engineer with Exxon in 1975 after graduating with a bachelor's degree in civil engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. By 1989, he had become general manager of the Exxon USA central production division. In 1995, he became president of Exxon Yemen Inc. and Esso Exploration and Production Khorat Inc. In 1998, he became vice president of Exxon Ventures (CIS) and president of Exxon Neftgas Limited. In 2004, he became president of Exxon Mobil Corporation. In 2006, Tillerson was elected chair and chief executive of ExxonMobil, the world's sixth-largest company by revenue. Tillerson retired from ExxonMobil effective January 1, 2017.

Tillerson is a longtime volunteer with the Boy Scouts of America and earned the rank of Eagle Scout. From 2010 to 2012, he was the national president of the Boy Scouts, its highest volunteer position. He is a longtime contributor to Republican campaigns, but did not donate to Donald Trump's presidential campaign. In 2014, Tillerson, who had made business deals on behalf of ExxonMobil with Russia, opposed the sanctions against Russia. He was previously the director of the joint United States-Russia oil company Exxon Neftegas.

Tillerson, an unconventional choice for the role, became secretary of state on February 1, 2017. His tenure was characterized by a lack of visibility in comparison to his predecessors in the traditionally high-profile position. During Tillerson's tenure, new applications to work for the Foreign Service fell by 50 percent, and four of the six career ambassadors as well as 14 of the 33 career ministers, equivalent to military four- and three-star generals, departed. After their relationship deteriorated, Trump dismissed Tillerson in March 2018, and replaced him with CIA director Mike Pompeo.

Tillerson is the son of Patty Sue (née Patton) and Bobby Joe Tillerson, and named after Rex Allen and John Wayne, two Hollywood actors famous for playing cowboys. He was raised in Vernon, Texas; Stillwater, Oklahoma; and Huntsville, Texas. He has two sisters, Rae Ann Hamilton, a physician who resides in Abilene, Texas, and Jo Lynn Peters, a high school educator. Tillerson's father was an executive of the Boy Scouts of America organization, and this led to his family's move to Huntsville. Tillerson himself has been active in the Boy Scouts for most of his life, and in his youth he earned the rank of Eagle Scout.

At age 14, while living in Stillwater, Oklahoma, he became a busser in the student union building at Oklahoma State University and began picking cotton for work on weekends. In 1968, two years afterward, he became a janitor of one of the university's engineering buildings.

Tillerson graduated from Huntsville High School in 1970. He was leader for the percussion section of his high school band, in which he played the kettle drums and snare drum, and he earned spots in the all-district and all-region bands during his senior year. Tillerson received a college scholarship from the University of Texas Longhorn Band. He received a bachelor of science degree in civil engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in 1975. During his time at UT Austin, he was involved with the Tejas Club (an all-male secret society) and the marching band.

Tillerson joined Exxon Company USA in 1975 as a production engineer. In 1989, Tillerson became general manager of the central production division of Exxon USA. In 1995, he became president of Exxon Yemen Inc. and Esso Exploration and Production Khorat Inc.

In 1998, he became a vice president of Exxon Ventures (CIS) and president of Exxon Neftegas Limited with responsibility for Exxon's holdings in Russia and the Caspian Sea. He then entered Exxon into the Sakhalin-I consortium with Rosneft.

In 1999, with the merger of Exxon and Mobil, he was named executive vice president of ExxonMobil Development Company. In 2004, he became president and director of ExxonMobil. With this appointment Tillerson's choice as the successor of Lee Raymond as CEO of Exxon Mobil was implied. His major competitor was Ed Galante, another Exxon executive. On January 1, 2006, Tillerson was elected chairman and CEO, following the retirement of Lee Raymond. At the time, ExxonMobil had 80,000 employees, did business in nearly 200 countries, and had an annual revenue of nearly $400 billion.

Under Tillerson's leadership, ExxonMobil worked closely with Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil exporter and a longtime U.S. ally, as well as Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. From 2003 to 2005, a European subsidiary of ExxonMobil, Infineum, operated in the Middle East providing sales to Iran, Sudan and Syria. ExxonMobil leaders said they followed all legal frameworks, and that such sales were minuscule compared to their annual revenue of $371 billion at the time. In 2009, ExxonMobil acquired XTO Energy, a major natural gas producer, for $31 billion in stock. Michael Corkery of The Wall Street Journal wrote that "Tillerson's legacy rides on the XTO deal." Tillerson approved Exxon negotiating a multibillion-dollar deal with the government of Iraqi Kurdistan, despite opposition from President Barack Obama and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, both of whom argued it would increase regional instability.

Tillerson lobbied against Rule 1504 of the Dodd–Frank reform and protections, which would have required Exxon to disclose payments to foreign governments. In 2017, Congress voted to overturn Rule 1504 one hour before Tillerson was confirmed as secretary of state.

Tillerson was first recommended to president-elect Trump for the secretary of state role by former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, during her meeting with Trump in late November 2016. Rice's recommendation of Tillerson to Trump was backed up by former secretary of defense Robert Gates, three days later. Media speculation that he was being considered for the position began on December 5, 2016. On December 9, transition officials reported that Tillerson was the top candidate for the position, surpassing contenders such as Mitt Romney and David Petraeus. His nomination was reportedly advocated by Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner.

On January 20, 2017, shortly after being sworn in as president of the United States, Trump formally sent his nomination of Tillerson as secretary of state to the United States Senate. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved Tillerson's nomination with a strict party-line vote of 11–10 on January 23, 2017.

The Senate confirmed Tillerson as secretary of state on February 1, 2017. The Senate voted 56 to 43, with all 52 Republicans in support of his nomination, as well as three Democrats and one independent. He was sworn in on the same day by Vice President Mike Pence.

The number of votes against Tillerson's confirmation was unusual for a secretary of state, as the previous record for votes against a nominee for secretary of state had been fourteen.

On February 15, 2017, Tillerson embarked on his first overseas trip as secretary of state, to Bonn, Germany, for a meeting with foreign ministers from the G20. In Bonn, Tillerson had meetings with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov of Russia and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson of the United Kingdom, as well as his counterparts from Italy, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates. Tillerson urged Russia to withdraw from eastern Ukraine, saying "the United States will consider working with Russia when we can find areas of practical cooperation that will benefit the American people. Where we do not see eye to eye, the United States will stand up for the interests and values of America and her allies. As we search for new common ground, we expect Russia to honor its commitment to the Minsk agreements and work to de-escalate the violence in Ukraine." Tillerson also reaffirmed U.S. commitment to defending South Korea and Japan.

In October 2017, Politico reported that Tillerson's major foreign policy positions include "urging the United States to stay in the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Paris climate accord, taking a hard line on Russia, advocating negotiations and dialogue to defuse the mounting crisis with North Korea, advocating for continued U.S. adherence to the Iran nuclear deal, taking a neutral position in the dispute between Qatar and Saudi Arabia, and reassuring jittery allies, from South Korea and Japan to our NATO partners, that America still has their back".

In 2014, Tillerson expressed opposition to the sanctions against Russia in response to the annexation of Crimea at an Exxon shareholder meeting. He told the meeting "We do not support sanctions, generally, because we don't find them to be effective unless they are very well implemented comprehensively and that's a very hard thing to do." In 2016, Tillerson said the U.S. should have deployed military units to neighboring states next to Russia in a more "muscular" response. In 2017, Tillerson said Russia's annexation of Crimea was illegal. He also compared China's controversial island-building in the South China Sea to Russia's annexation of Crimea.

During his secretary of state confirmation hearings, Marco Rubio asked Tillerson if he would label Saudi Arabia as a "human rights violator". Tillerson declined to do so, saying: "When you designate someone or label someone, is that the most effective way to have progress be able to be made in Saudi Arabia or any other country?" He supported the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen.

Tillerson announced in 2009 that ExxonMobil favored a carbon tax as "the most efficient means of reflecting the cost of carbon in all economic decisions—from investments made by companies to fuel their requirements to the product choices made by consumers". In October 2016, less than two months before his nomination as Secretary of State, he reaffirmed that ExxonMobil believed a carbon tax would be "the best policy of those being considered. Replacing the hodge-podge of current, largely ineffective regulations with a revenue-neutral carbon tax would ensure a uniform and predictable cost of carbon across the economy ... allow market forces to drive solutions ... maximize transparency, reduce administrative complexity, promote global participation and easily adjust" to new knowledge in climate science and in the policy consequences of various courses of action.

An article in The New York Times suggested that ExxonMobil's embrace of a carbon tax in October 2009 may have simply been an effort to avoid cap and trade legislation that was then being considered by the U.S. Congress as an alternative method of carbon pricing. A Time magazine article in December 2016 asserted that since Tillerson announced his company's preference for a carbon tax, ExxonMobil "has not made a carbon tax a focus of its massive lobbying efforts and has supported a number of candidates and organizations that oppose measures to tackle the [climate change] issue".

Tillerson has been married twice. He divorced Jamie Lee Henry, his first wife, with whom he has two children. In 1986, Tillerson married Renda St. Clair. Tillerson and St. Clair also have a child.

Tillerson resides in Bartonville, Texas. Following his appointment as secretary of state, Tillerson bought a home in Kalorama, Washington, D.C.