Trump expected to tap billionaire investor Wilbur Ross for Commnerce secretary
Yian Q. Mui and Robert Costa
“Whether it’s producing steel or building cars or curing disease, I want the next generation of production and innovation to happen right here on our great homeland, America,” Trump said.
In Ross, Trump has tapped a like-minded businessman who understands the prospects for both profit and peril in restoring American manufacturing. Ross built his fortune buying the distressed companies that were once at the heart of American industry — steel mills, coal mines and textile factories, to name a few — and then selling them in short order, making billions of dollars along the way.
[Ross: How Trump would stimulate the U.S. economy]
Perhaps his signature investment was the purchase of some of the nation’s largest steel mills in the early 2000s, including Cleveland-based LTV Corp. and Pennsylvania’s Bethlehem Steel. The move was credited with saving manufacturing jobs, with the United Steelworkers calling Ross “a new ally” in news reports at the time.
Since then, however, many steel mills have shut down amid a glut of foreign production, much of it in China. Ross sold his steel conglomerate to what is now ArcelorMittal in 2004 for about $4.5 billion.
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