Introducing Wilbur Ross, Grand Swipe of Commerce
Draining the Swamp One Billionaire at a Time
Wednesday, president-elect Trump announced Wilbur Ross as his pick for Secretary of Commerce. While he’s not publicly well-known in a political context, the guy is no outsider. With a net worth approaching three billion dollars, the selection of Mr. Ross advances the narrative that Mr. Trump aims to fill his swamp with more one percenters than any administration in history.
Wilbur Ross is known to his colleagues as “The King of Bankruptcy.” Funny, I thought that title belonged to Trump himself. But it means something a little different in this case. While Trump is known for driving his companies into massive debt, then using Chapter 11 bankruptcy laws to restructure, Wilbur Ross is known for buying up and turning around troubled companies in or nearing bankruptcy and bringing them back to life. Of course in the world of these two gentleman, “back to life” really means returning to profitability for investors. It doesn’t mean everybody keeps their jobs. Most of Ross’ restructurings involved shrinkage, ie job loss, albeit to a smaller degree than if the companies had gone under altogether.
His industry experience is broad. He’s snatched up distressed companies in auto parts, textiles, coal, steel, and oil and gas. This must be where he gets his relatability to the working man, because it didn’t come from his time at Xavier Prep, Yale, or Harvard, or from his four decades of accumulating great wealth through investing.
In 2014, Ross was “Grand Swipe” of the secret Wall Street society, Kappa Beta Phi. (Grand Swipe is the elite group’s pet name for their president.) He may still be, but given the secrecy, we can’t be sure. To glean a little about the character of our next Commerce Secretary, you may want to take a look at former NY Times writer Kevin Roose’s expose about a Kappa Beta Phi induction event he managed to sneak into. It’s very revealing of the dismissal and outright disdain of ordinary Americans shown by this group of still-dripping-with-wealth Wall Street tycoons who 6 years earlier had brought the world economy to its knees. Their sheer indifference to the reality of actual human beings on whom they inflicted great hardship is astounding, and Wilbur Ross is their leader.
Wilbur Ross’s relationship with Donald Trump goes way back to the early 1990s when Ross was instrumental in ensuring Trump could retain some degree of ownership of his failing properties during his many bankruptcies. More recently, Ross became a vocal Trump supporter turned economic adviser. It’s being said that he’s a good friend of Trump, one of the few associates he will listen to.
Ideologically, Wilbur Ross is a little tough to pin down. He’s supported both Democrats and Republicans in the past, though he has stated on multiple occasions that over-regulation and too much government are the biggest hindrances to the economy. He, like Donald Trump, is first and foremost a businessman.
An outspoken critic of trade deals like the TPP, he notably told Lou Dobbs,
“Free trade is like free lunch. There is no free lunch. Somebody wins and somebody loses. And unfortunately, we’ve been losing with these stupid agreements that we’ve made.”
On this issue, by choosing Wilber Ross, Trump is staying true to his position on a central campaign theme — that of opposing free trade agreements as they currently exist. Ross has expressed a preference for striking deals with individual countries rather than entire regions at once. His argument on this is that as the world’s largest importer, the U.S. Has more leverage than is being used, and that should change.
As Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross will act as the liaison between American Business and the world. He will be instrumental in devising and negotiating trade deals. He appears to share Donald Trump’s view that current trade agreements and the TPP are not benefiting American businesses and workers, and with that I can agree. The fact that he’s a billionaire investor, however, provides reason for skepticism. It has to make you wonder what his priorities really are.
Take a comment he made to Bloomberg TV’s Betty Liu and Cristina Alesci in February, 2014. Hedge fund mogul Sam Zell had recently made a statement about the beleaguered 1 percenters. Wilbur Ross was asked if he agreed. His response was that,
“I agree that the one percent is being picked on for political reasons. I think the right focus would be how do you help the lower classes elevate themselves. And I think what’s disappointing with all the rhetoric, they’re not doing anything to fix the educational system. Education is the way that people get out of the ghetto and into if not the one percent something close to it.”
There’s a lot to pick over here.
First of all, his unfortunate choice of the word “ghetto.” I’m not going to get too worked up about it, but I will say it reveals a definite disconnect between the rich old man and the people he has been entrusted to advocate for.
Next, he believes the one percent are being picked on. Yeah, like I said earlier, this is why it’s tough to trust a billionaire investor with enacting policy that will affect the millions of us who don’t live in his world. His worldview is ridiculously skewed by his wealth and status, and he clearly has no concept of what average Americans need and how we live.
Lastly, he offers education as the answer to the problem of inequality. Kudos to you, Mr. Ross. Now maybe you can have a little chat with one percenter friend, Betsy DeVos, Trump’s new Education Secretary about that.
Of all Trump’s picks so far, Wilbur Ross lands high on the list in terms of reasonableness. He’s non-establishment in that he doesn’t come from government and he’s not a lobbyist. He agrees that trade agreements in their current form are not working. His restructuring of failing companies hasn’t been a boon to industrial jobs, but he is credited with saving many that would have been lost had the companies gone under. I would love to stand on principle against his extreme wealth-induced distortion of reality, and in my heart I do. But while far from ideal, when it comes to progressives picking battles, we can leave Wilbur Ross on the back burner for the time being. Unfortunately, we’ve got bigger fish to fry.
This article originally appeared on OrangeIsTheNewWhiteHouse.org. Used with permission of the author. All rights reserved.
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