Video: Analyst: Wilbur Ross and Steven Mnuchin are relatively safe Trump choices

President-elect Donald Trump picks ex-Goldman Sachs Steven Mnuchin to lead the U.S. Treasury Department and billionaire Wilbur Ross for the Commerce, and Wall Street breathes a sigh of relief, says an analyst. Bobbi Rebell reports.</s>When former President George W. Bush assembled his first Cabinet in 2001, news reports dubbed them a team of millionaires, and government watchdogs questioned whether they were out of touch with most Americans’ problems. Combined, that group had an inflation-adjusted net worth of about $250 million – which is roughly one-tenth the wealth of President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for commerce secretary alone.

Trump is putting together what will be the wealthiest administration in modern American history. His announced nominees for top positions include several multimillionaires, an heir to a family megafortune and two Forbes-certified billionaires. Rumored candidates for other positions suggest that Trump could add more ultra-rich appointees soon.

Many of the Trump appointees were born wealthy, attended elite schools and went on to amass even larger fortunes as adults. As a group, they have much more experience funding political candidates than they do running government agencies.

Their collective wealth in many ways defies Trump’s populist campaign promises. Their business ties, particularly to Wall Street, have drawn rebukes from Democrats. But the group also amplifies Trump’s own campaign pitch: that Washington outsiders who know how to navigate and exploit a “rigged” system are best able to fix that system for the working class.

“It fits into Trump’s message that he’s trying to do business in an unusual way, by bringing in these outsiders,” said Nicole Hemmer, an assistant professor in presidential studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. But Trump and his team, she added, won’t be able to draw on the same sort of life struggles that President Barack Obama did, in crafting policy to lift poor and middle-class Americans.

“They’re just not going to have any access to that” life experience, she said. “I guess it will be a test – does empathy actually matter?”

Trump’s nominee for commerce secretary is industrialist Wilbur Ross, who has amassed a fortune of $2.5 billion through decades at the helm of Rothschild’s bankruptcy practice and his own investment firm, according to Forbes.

Ross’ would-be deputy at the Commerce Department, Todd Ricketts, is the son of a billionaire and the co-owner of the Chicago Cubs. Steven Mnuchin, who Trump named to head the Treasury Department, is a former Goldman Sachs executive, hedge fund executive and Hollywood financier.

Betsy DeVos, a Michigan billionaire who was nominated as Trump’s education secretary, is the daughter of Richard DeVos, the co-founder of Amway. Her family has a net worth of $5.1 billion, according to Forbes. Elaine Chao, the choice for transportation secretary, is the daughter of a shipping magnate.

It is a group that has long spent big to influence politics. Mnuchin, Ross and DeVos each made hundreds of thousands of dollars of political contributions within the last two years, according to OpenSecrets.org. In Ross’ Manhattan office, next to a window overlooking Central Park, there is a table filled with pictures of himself with candidates to whom he has contributed, including John Boehner, Michael Bloomberg and Bill Clinton.

On Wednesday, Democrats seized on Ross’ and Mnuchin’s Wall Street ties to accuse Trump of undermining his populist pitch.

“I’m not shocked by this. It’s a billionaire president being surrounded by a billionaire and millionaire cabinet, with a billionaire agenda … to hurt the middle class,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio. “The appointments suggest that he’s going to break his campaign promises.”

In their first interviews Wednesday after being unveiled as Cabinet nominees, Mnuchin and Ross pitched their business experience as beneficial to the goals of boosting workers.

“I think one of the good things about both Wilbur and I, we have actually been bankers,” Mnuchin told CNBC, adding, “We’ve been in the business of regional banking, and we understand what it means to make loans.”

On the campaign trail, Trump pledged to lift up Americans who have seen their economic prospects dim with the loss of well-paying blue-collar jobs. And indeed, voters by and large ignored Trump’s own opulence, which never became the baggage that it did for the 2012 Republican nominee, Mitt Romney.

Still, the question now is whether public officials who come from such privileged backgrounds will favor policies that benefit the rich.

“This isn’t a criticism or a conspiracy, … but it’s important to recognize that everyone’s perspective and policy and government is shaped by the kind of life you’ve lived,” said Nicholas Carnes, a political scientist at Duke University. “The research really says that when you put a bunch of millionaires in charge, you can expect public policy that helps millionaires at the expense of everybody else.”

Future appointments could further increase the wealth of Trump’s Cabinet. Harold Hamm – a self-made oil industry executive who ranks 30th on the Forbes 400, a list of the wealthiest Americans, with a net worth of $16.7 billion – is on Trump’s shortlist for secretary of energy.</s>Trump Taps Billionaire Investor Wilbur Ross For Commerce Secretary

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President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Wilbur Ross Jr., a billionaire investor and turnaround specialist, as his commerce secretary.

Ross announced his selection Wednesday during a joint CNBC interview with longtime Wall Street banker Steve Mnuchin, Trump's pick for Treasury secretary.

"Wilbur Ross is a champion of American manufacturing and knows how to help companies succeed," Trump said in a statement announcing his choice.

"Wilbur knows that cutting taxes for working families, reducing burdensome government regulations and unleashing America's energy resources will strengthen our economy at a time when our country needs to see significant growth."

Ross, 79, is a donor and longtime associate of Trump's, having helped him resurrect his casino company after it went bankrupt in the early 1990s.

Over the years, Ross has grown rich by buying troubled companies in industries such as steel, textiles, auto parts and coal and restructuring them, often with significant layoffs and budget cuts. He is said by Forbes to be worth $2.9 billion, making him the country's 232nd richest person.

In 2002, he cobbled together several troubled steel companies to create the International Steel Group. He later sold the company to Mittal Steel in the Netherlands.

As The New York Times reported, "Some businesses where he has invested, like textile mills, have struggled. But other investments have salvaged industry and jobs while providing a lucrative payday."

In 2008, Ross told NPR's Steve Inskeep:

"One of the problems with industries that have been in relatively long-term declines is that very often, the managements in those industries develop a kind of loser mentality. And when you ask them what's wrong with the business, they'll point to extraneous forces. "It'll be the fault of the unions, or it'll be the fault of China or the fault of the government or the fault of the class-action people. So rather than dealing with the things that may be within their own control, they kind of sit around sulking about things that are fundamentally out of their control."

Ross is the chairman and chief strategy officer, as well as the founder, of the private equity firm WL Ross and Co. He later sold the company to Invesco but is still involved with it.

Among the darker chapters in his career was his involvement with the Sago Mine in West Virginia. Shortly after his company purchased the mine, an explosion there killed 12 miners.

A former Democrat, Ross has been a loyal Trump supporter who shares his skepticism about trade agreements and said in a June interview with CNBC that the U.S. needs a "more radical, new approach to government."

His second of three wives was former New York Lt. Gov. Betsy McCaughey, who authored several articles widely thought to have helped kill off Hillary Clinton's attempt at health care reform in the 1990s.

In Wednesday's statement, Trump also announced that he's selected Chicago Cubs co-owner Todd Ricketts for the job of deputy commerce secretary.</s>Billionaire investor Wilbur Ross is President-elect Donald Trump's pick for Commerce secretary, two sources tell CNN.

The nomination is expected to be rolled out as part of an economic team announcement on Wednesday, when Trump will likely name Steven Mnuchin as treasury secretary.

The Cabinet-level position, which requires Senate confirmation, serves as the government's chief business advocate. The Commerce secretary is a liaison between companies and the White House. Ross could play a key role in what are expected to be Trump's signature economic policy issues like trade and jobs.

Ross, 79, fits the type of administration official Trump pledged to appoint during the campaign: businessmen with long resumes at the ready to negotiate for U.S. interests around the world.

As a vocal Trump supporter before the election, Ross cited the need for a "more radical, new approach to government" that would help middle class and lower middle class Americans.

Ross, chairman of WL Ross & Co., has made a career of resurrecting dying companies. Fittingly, some of Ross's biggest hits have been in the same demoralized industries that Trump wants to revive: steel and coal.

For instance, Ross's firm scored huge returns last decade by cobbling together bankrupt steel makers including Bethlehem Steel to form International Steel Group. Ross then flipped the conglomerate in a $4.5 billion sale two years later.

Ross's foray into the coal industry, however, ran into trouble in January 2006 when 12 miners were killed after an explosion at the Sago Mine in West Virginia. His company, the International Coal Group, had taken over the mine a couple months earlier.

According to federal reports, the mine had recorded 96 safety violations in 2005 that were deemed "serious and substantial." The mine was fined nearly $134,000, an amount later reduced in court.

Ross, a New Jersey native, has amassed a fortune that Forbes estimates is worth nearly $3 billion. He's used some of that money to build an impressive art collection worth a reported $150 million.

In addition to chairing his equity fund, Ross also sits on a number of boards of directors, including for the Bank of Cyprus, where he is vice chairman; Arcelor Mittal, a steel giant; Sun Bancorp, a bank holding compnay; and Exco Resources, a natural gas and oil exploration company.

Like Trump, who famously called himself the "king of debt," Ross is not afraid to borrow money. Ross frequently used debt to finance his acquisitions, a tactic known as a leveraged buyout.

Carl Icahn, another billionaire backer of Trump, said on Twitter before the announcement that Ross is one of the "smartest people I know" and would be a "great" choice to lead the Commerce Department.

Should Ross be confirmed, he would take over for Penny Pritzker, who has held the job under President Obama since 2013. And his policies would likely represent a 180-degree departure from Pritzker's Commerce Department.

Pritzker strongly supported free trade and has traveled to 38 countries during her tenure. She advocated clean energy partnerships and the Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal, both of which Donald Trump campaigned hard against.

Ross has been a vocal critic of free trade deals.

"Free trade is like free lunch: There is no free lunch," Ross told Fox Business in August. "Somebody wins and somebody loses. And unfortunately, we've been losing with these stupid agreements that we've made."

The Commerce Department includes the International Trade Administration, which enforces the nation's trade agreements.

Whoever is chosen as commerce secretary will likely continue many of the policies that Pritzker and the Obama administration held dear.

Pritzker supported public-private partnerships to build up American manufacturing industries. Many businesses -- notably For (F)-- have recently opted to keep some of their plants open in the United States as a result of those initiatives.

Other important agencies fall under the Commerce Department, including the National Weather Service, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the agency that tracks economic growth, the trade surplus or deficit and other important economic measures.

The new secretary will also oversee the 2020 national census. The census is critical for understanding the scope of poverty and underserved communities across the country. It is also the basis for adjusting the number of congressional districts in each state, which determines presidential electoral votes.

--CNNMoney's Jill Disis and David Goldman contributed to this story.</s>The self-proclaimed King of Debt has chosen someone that Wall Street has dubbed the King of Bankruptcy to be his Commerce Secretary.

Wilbur Ross, the billionaire investor who is known for buying up distressed and failing companies, is President-elect Donald Trump's choice for the job.

That news, combined with the nomination of former Goldman Sachs (GS) banker and Hollywood executive Steven Mnuchin as Treasury Secretary, shows that Trump wants businessmen -- and not career politicians -- in key financial posts.

But Ross, who sold his WL Ross & Co. firm to Invesco (IVZ) in 2006 for $375 million, has his own history with the federal government.

In fact, Ross has profited thanks to some help from the government agency FDIC, which insures bank deposits and takes over insolvent banks.

In 2009, the FDIC agreed to sell BankUnited, a failed bank in Florida to an investor group that included WL Ross & Co and investment firms Carlyle Group (CG) and Blackstone (BX).

It was the first time that the FDIC allowed private equity firms like WL Ross to be involved in a deal for a failed bank. Ross and the other BankUnited (BKU) investors then took the company public in 2011. Ross sold his remaining stake in 2014.

Ross, who made a name for himself buying up distressed assets in the steel and coal businesses, has been focusing more on banks since the financial crisis of 2008.

Ross has a stake in the Bank of Cyprus and is currently its vice chairman. He has invested in several other troubled European lenders, such as Bank of Ireland and Greece's Eurobank Ergasias.

Ross also announced plans last month to sell his stake in Virgin Money, the lender founded by British mogul Sir Richard Branson.

The Commerce Department's main job is to try and promote economic growth and job creation and doesn't work as closely with Wall Street as the Treasury Department.

What's more, WL Ross & Co. was just fined $2.3 million by the SEC in August for charges that the firm failed to disclose certain fees to its investors.

Ross probably won't face much resistance in his Senate confirmation hearing given the Republican control of the Senate.

But it will be interesting to see if his reputation as a so-called vulture investor that preys on troubled companies will be viewed as a negative.</s>Dr. Josef Ackermann, Chairman of the Bank of Cyprus Group, Congratulates Wilbur Ross on Nomination

Commenting on the nomination of the Bank of Cyprus Group's Vice-Chairman Wilbur Ross to the position of United States Secretary of Commerce in President-elect Trump's cabinet, Dr. Josef Ackermann, Chairman of the Bank of Cyprus Group, said:

"We congratulate Wilbur Ross on his nomination to the post of United States Secretary of Commerce. Having worked closely with Wilbur on the Board of the Bank of Cyprus Group over the past couple of years and seen, first hand, his tremendous contribution to the successful turnaround of the Group, I am confident that President-elect Trump has made an excellent choice."

ORIGINAL APA-OTS TEXT - THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS PRESS RELEASE IS SUBJECT TO THE EXCLUSIVE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE ISSUER | PRN0018</s>WASHINGTON – A vocal critic of the North American Free Trade Agreement will be in charge of the U.S. commerce portfolio, with the nomination Wednesday of Wilbur Ross, a billionaire investor who condemns foreign sales taxes as a backdoor tariff on American goods.

The 79-year-old investor in manufacturing companies helped write Donald Trump’s trade platform – which accused U.S. trading partners of using value-added taxes as an economic weapon, to force American companies to move offshore.

Ross co-authored an economic policy paper that proposed renegotiating NAFTA and included a call for combating the use of foreign consumption taxes that render American-made goods less competitive. Trump echoed the paper’s views in campaign speeches.

The document argued that foreign countries offer a sales-tax rebate on their own goods shipped abroad, but then tax incoming products from the U.S., which does not have a value-added tax. The net effect, he said, is to invite U.S. companies to relocate.

Related: What happens when the walls go up?

“Like many countries, Mexico has shrewdly exploited the (value-added tax) backdoor tariff to further its competitive advantage,” Ross wrote in the 31-page pager, co-authored in September with University of California business professor Peter Navarro.

“It is thus not surprising that U.S. corporations want to move their factories offshore and then export their products back to the U.S.”

Ross is one of several billionaires nominated to the new Trump cabinet.

The latest additions to the administration on Wednesday included a treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, who worked at Goldman Sachs and whom critics say was instrumental in introducing the creative debt-swapping instruments that contributed to the global financial crisis; and Ameritrade heir and Chicago Cubs owner Todd Ricketts, nominated as deputy commerce secretary.

Trump has yet to name the next U.S. trade representative – responsible for executing his promise to renegotiate or cancel NAFTA.

Yet some observers suggest he’s signalled his seriousness on trade by nominating a billionaire best known for buying struggling U.S. manufacturing companies, then either saving them, according to admirers, or brutally downsizing them, according to detractors.

One observer voiced both opinions of Ross.

Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, a coalition of steel industries and the United Steelworkers union, told the Wall Street Journal: “There are lots of jobs (in the U.S.) that are here now that would have disappeared forever if not for his interventions. … But he’s like dealing with a trauma surgeon: He can keep you alive, but it will cost you your leg.”

Trump himself hinted Ross will be applying his negotiation skills.

“Wilbur Ross is a champion of American manufacturing and knows how to help companies succeed,” Trump said in a statement.

“Most importantly, he is one of the greatest negotiators I have ever met and that comes from me, the author of The Art of the Deal.”

It’s unclear how Canada fits into the complaints about NAFTA.

During the campaign, Trump almost never mentioned Canada. Ross did the same in the September paper he co-authored – it mentioned Mexico 10 times, and Canada just once, in passing, as one of the major countries contributing to the U.S. trade deficit.

A leading expert on international tax policy says Canada could be affected by the trade talk.

“I guess, probably, Canada should worry,” said Gary Hufbauer, a former U.S. federal official and now a fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

“If Canada loves its value-added tax, or its GST as they call it … that’s fine. That doesn’t bother Trump at all.” But when it’s applied to imports, Hufbauer said: “He sees it as a tariff when you levy it at the border.”

He said one of two things might happen: the U.S. will push for an end on tax rebates for products shipped into the U.S., or introduce its own rebates as suggested in a plan by Republican congressional leader Paul Ryan.

Hufbauer economists will conclude it’s no big deal – because currencies would adjust to the new reality and because Canada has a smaller trade surplus with the U.S. than Mexico, which would feel a deeper sting.

“It’s not a big concern for economists at the University of Toronto who are going to say the Canadian dollar is going to offset (this),” Hufbauer said.

“They’re going to go on TV and tell people not to worry. … But it’s a big concern for firms that (trade across the border).”</s>An announcement on Ross to lead the department, which pursues anti-dumping cases against cheap foreign imports, could come as early as Wednesday, NBC News said.

Ross declined to comment to Reuters on Tuesday.

Ross, 78, a staunch supporter of Trump and an economic adviser, has helped shape the Trump campaign's views on trade policy, blaming the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico and the 2001 entry of China into the World Trade Organization for causing massive U.S. factory job losses.

"I think there’s a big difference between the impact of trade agreements on corporate America and the impact on Mr. and Mrs. America," Ross told CNBC in an interview earlier this year. "Corporate America has adjusted to them by investing lots of capital offshore."

Ross, whose net worth was pegged by Forbes at about $2.9 billion, heads the private equity firm, W.L. Ross & Co in New York.

Ross' connections to Trump date back to 1990, when as a turnaround expert for Rothschild and Co he worked on behalf of bondholders to help engineer a restructuring of hundreds of millions of dollars in debt owed on Trump's Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

In 2002, by then in charge of his own private equity firm, Ross formed International Steel Group to consolidate several bankrupt steelmakers, including Bethlehem Steel, Acme Steel and LTV Steel. He sold the company in a $4.5 billion deal two years later to Mittal Steel.

Ross retains a stake in what is now part of the world's largest steel company, Arcelor Mittal, and sits on its board of directors.

His various business interests, which also include automotive components and textiles, could make avoiding conflicts of interest a complicated prospect as the head of an agency with broad influence over trade cases and U.S. industrial policies.

Arcelor Mittal has benefited from several recent anti-dumping and anti-subsidy duties imposed by the Commerce Department against a wide range of steel products from China, South Korea, Japan, Britain, Turkey and other countries. Those have helped lift domestic steel prices, boosting the company's bottom line.

Ross may also face questions from lawmakers over the January 2006 Sago coal mine disaster in West Virginia that killed 12 miners in an explosion and collapse. Owned by a subsidiary of one of his companies, International Coal Group, the mine had been cited for more than 200 safety violations

International Coal was sold for $3.4 billion in 2011 to No. 2 U.S. coal miner Arch Coal, which filed for bankruptcy protection in January amid plummeting coal prices.

He could be questioned as well over a $2.3 million fine his firm agreed to pay in August to the Securities and Exchange Commission to settle accusations it did not properly disclose some fees that it charged investors.</s>Wilbur Ross, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for Commerce secretary, told Finance Minister Taro Aso of his interest in strengthening bilateral economic ties in a letter personally delivered by a representative in Tokyo on Thursday.

According to a source who sat in on the meeting at the Finance Ministry between Aso and a delegation representing Ross, a private equity investor who has had extensive business dealings in Japan, the letter included Ross’ view that Japan-U.S. cooperation is important.

The source said Ross’ representative and Aso exchanged views on the Trump administration’s likely economic policies and the Japanese government’s Abenomics economic and fiscal policy package.

Another member of the delegation, identifying himself as a financial adviser to Ross, told Kyodo News after the meeting that Ross is “very supportive of Japan.”

Ross and Aso had apparently planned a face-to-face meeting in Japan before Ross’ nomination prompted him to cancel the trip.

The letter follows Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s meeting with Trump in November at Trump’s residence in New York. Neither side revealed much about the content of the meeting, with Abe saying only he came away from the talks feeling he can build a relationship of trust with the president-elect.

Ross has long been a proponent of free trade but has criticized the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact inked between Japan, the United States and 10 other Pacific Rim nations in February.

While Abe continues to encourage Japan’s ratification process and push for all signatories to remain committed to the deal, Trump has pledged to pull the United States out as soon as he takes office on Jan. 20.

Ross told a U.S. television channel Wednesday that the TPP is “not going to happen.”

“The TPP does not exist. It’s a fiction in most people’s minds at this point,” he told Fox Business, adding he agrees with Trump’s stance that the United States should instead work on bilateral deals.

Ross has a history of investing in distressed assets. His dealings in Japan have included the purchase and restructuring of Kofuku Bank, an Osaka-based regional bank that had been placed under state control after collapsing in 1999.

He is also the chairman of the Japan Society, a New York-based nonprofit organization that promotes relations between Japan and the United States.

The Japanese government awarded Ross with the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star, in 2014, for his efforts in advancing cultural exchanges and strengthening bilateral ties.</s>President-elect Donald Trump's pick for Commerce Secretary said Wednesday night that the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement is one of the first -- if not the first -- things he will tackle on Day One of the job.

In an interview on CNN's "Erin Burnett Outfront," Wilbur Ross, the chairman of private equity firm WL Ross & Co, said "we're working out the fine-point details, but NAFTA is a logical starting point," adding that it would make sense because it was a large part of Trump's campaign.

When it comes to China, which Trump also focused on during the campaign, Ross said "China is the world's biggest exporter, but they're also the people with one of the highest tariffs on imports in the whole world. That seems a little bit oxymoronic."

Ross said Trump will not blink in talks with China, and said the president-elect means business when he says he would impose as much as a 45% tariff on China if it turns out their currency is overvalued by as much as 45% and they refuse to negotiate.

Ross insisted that Trump does not back down in negotiations.

"I've negotiated with him [Trump] over the years and he is not a bluffer," he said. "So if he says he will do something in a negotiation, not -- I'm not talking about a campaign speech, in an actual negotiation, if he says if you don't do this, I will do that, you bet your booty he will do it."

Ross, a billionaire, pushed back against criticism that Trump has picked multiple billionaires for his administration despite running a populist campaign, saying he gets along quite well with unions such as the Teamsters and United Autoworkers.

"The fact that you're successful doesn't mean that you can't relate to working people," Ross said.

Ross also said that he has complete faith in Trump.

"I wouldn't be giving up my day job for -- for any other reason except I believe in him," Ross said. "I believe in America. And I believe it's going to work just fine."

He pointed to the stock market as proof, adding "I see a bull market has happened. I see record-breaking prices. And pretty soon, in the next year or so, you're going to see some real impact on the economy."
Trump intends to appoint billionaire Wilbur Ross as United States Secretary of Commerce.