“The president-elect believes, as do I, that the right government policies can result in more jobs and better wages for the American worker. I’m proud to be offered the chance to serve in his administration,” Puzder said in a statement provided by the Trump transition team.

Puzder abandoned a career in law to take charge of CKE Restaurants, the parent company of Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr., in 1997 and is often credited with saving the then-faltering company.

In Puzder, Trump has picked a person who matches President Obama’s current labor secretary, Tom Perez, in ideological zeal, just in the other direction. Matthew Patterson, executive director of conservative Center for Worker Freedom, an arm of Americans for Tax Reform, praised the pick.

“Running vast franchise empires gives him rare insight into the bureaucratic nightmare that the Department of Labor has become. He’s both what the DOL desperately needs and what its career paper pushers fear,” Patterson said.

James Sherk, labor policy analyst for the conservative Heritage Foundation, called him an “excellent pick,” saying he was “perfectly in keeping with Trump’s campaign commitments to roll back excessive job-killing regulations.”

Puzder has been a major critic of higher minimum wage laws, the administration’s efforts to make franchise companies legally responsible for their franchisees, and the president’s signature domestic achievement, Obamacare.

“Congress must understand that laws have a real impact on real people who are working in real businesses. We have to keep those businesses profitable and successful or we lose our jobs and endanger our future,” Puzder said in a 2011 testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing.

In 2011, he co-authored the book, Job Creation: How It Really Works and Why Government Doesn’t Understand It.

He grew increasingly critical of Obama’s policies in recent years, telling Fox News in 2014, “I think basically everything this administration has done has been anti-business.”

While many free-market economists were put off by Trump’s rhetoric against immigration, trade and the financial sector, Puzder was among those who argued that the candidate was the fixer the economy needed.

“Trump’s entire economic plan is populist and intended to generate growth that would benefit American workers and small to mid-sized businesses, thereby reducing income inequality, increasing wages and opening paths to the middle class,” he wrote in a November blog post.

However, he supports legal immigration and says Trump’s plan to deport illegal immigrants is “unworkable.”

“Legal immigrants are an asset to the country. We believe that deporting 11 million people is unworkable, and we hope in the end Mr. Trump comes to this same conclusion. Deportation should be pursued only when an illegal immigrant has committed a felony or become a ‘public charge,” Puzer wrote in the Wall Street Journal in July with another Trump adviser ,Stephen Moore.

Business groups applauded the news. Robert Cresanti, president of the International Franchise Association, called Puzder an “exceptional choice” due to his private-sector experience.

“We applaud President-elect Trump for recognizing Andy’s business experience and policy acumen on so many issues impacting employers and employees in today’s economy,” Cresanti said.

Liberal groups have been dreading the prospect of a Puzder nomination. A Monday column in the liberal American Prospect called him the higher minimum wage movement’s “worst nightmare.”

“Puzder opposes any increase to the minimum wage, believes that workers are kept in poverty because of government assistance programs, and thinks expanding access to overtime pay would diminish the prestige of entry-level management jobs,” the article said.