Admirers praise Wilbur Ross as “the king of bankruptcy," calling him a savior of failing U.S. industries.

But his critics have a different name for the 78-year-old investor said to be Donald Trump’s pick for Commerce secretary. They describe him as a “vulture,” and say his restructuring of ailing industries has sometimes come at the expense of workers’ safety — in one egregious case, contributing to the deaths of 12 miners in Sago, West Virginia.


Should Ross be nominated as Commerce secretary, some of those questionable practices are sure to be under a spotlight during his confirmation hearings, making him a complicated choice as the official in charge of promoting U.S. business abroad and defending U.S. trade laws. Also likely to get attention are his dizzying array of domestic and foreign investments and business dealings. Those include board positions on at least five major public companies and leadership in several private firms.

“He might be the second-most complicated person in the administration to vet, behind the president-elect himself,” said Norman Eisen, a Brookings Institution visiting fellow who once served as President Barack Obama's chief ethics lawyer.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Ross has told associates he’s likely to take an administration job and that it would mean the end of his business career because he would be forced to divest himself of his investment holdings. He declined to comment to POLITICO.

Ross is precisely the sort of Cabinet pick that Trump boasted on the campaign trail he would make: By all accounts, Ross is a savvy negotiator and a member of the same club of enormously successful billionaires as Trump: He has an estimated net worth of $2.9 billion and a house down the street from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach. During the campaign, he helped Trump argue the case to renegotiate “bad” trade deals and impose “defensive tariffs” on imports from China and Mexico. And he shares Trump’s views that China and other countries are taking U.S. industry to the cleaners based on his experience snapping up assets bankrupted in part by foreign competition.

Most experts agree that to serve as Commerce secretary, the Wall Street insider would have to end personal involvement in business activities, step down from boards, recuse himself from certain decisions and put his investments in a blind trust. Obama, as a rule, made his Cabinet members give up any corporate board seats, although it remains to be seen whether Trump will demand the same.

“There would be a lot of work that would have to go into clearing someone with that many financial entanglements,” said Doug Graham, managing director at the intelligence firm Investigative Group International. Graham oversaw vetting operations for Obama's second term.

Ross, who has degrees from Harvard and Yale and heads his own private equity firm, WL Ross and Co. wouldn’t be the first billionaire to lead the Commerce Department, as he would replace Chicago tycoon Penny Pritzker in the top spot.

Ross is also on the boards of directors of the Bank of Cyprus, the natural-gas and oil exploration company EXCO Resources, the bank holding company Sun Bancorp, the chemicals and plastics distribution company Nexeo Solutions, and the shipping company DSS Holdings, among others.

His investments in steel, in particular, place him close to an industry that has waged an aggressive campaign of trade cases against foreign competitors. That could raise questions over whether he might benefit financially from favorable trade rulings by Commerce’s International Trade Administration, which determines retaliatory tariff margins.

In 2002, Ross created the International Steel Group by buying up beleaguered companies like LTV Steel and Bethlehem Steel Corp. for pennies on the dollar, only to sell the business for $4.5 billion in 2005 to Mittal Steel Co., which later merged with European steelmaker Arcelor to become ArcelorMittal. He still sits on the board of directors of that company, the world’s largest steelmaker. The company’s U.S. subsidiary has been an active petitioner in trade remedy cases.

Ross also restructured major U.S. textile companies into the International Textile Group, although he is no longer invested in that company. He’s done the same with companies in the coal and auto-parts sectors.

“Having experience with Mr. Ross and one of his holdings, I realize that he does place significant value on U.S. production and the U.S. workforce and U.S. investment, and I think that’s a good thing,” said Auggie Tantillo, who heads the trade group, National Council of Textile Organizations

Similarly, Ross is seen by those in the steel industry as a shrewd pick who has his finger on the pulse of America’s distressed manufacturing sectors.

“There have been people who have found their way to this position who are in charge of laws they don’t believe in,” said one industry source, noting that Ross would likely take full advantage of his authority at Commerce if he assumes the job.

The depth of Ross’ investments in U.S. manufacturing likely make him a true believer in the need to ratchet up enforcement of trade violations, as Trump has said he wants to do.

That could help burnish Ross’ image among industry and labor heads as a Rust Belt savior. Even though his restructurings have led to the shedding of pensions and some pain among workers, some labor leaders have praised the industrialist for daring to take a chance on companies others had left for dead.

“I really think the future of domestic manufacturing is people like Wilbur Ross,” Bruce Raynor, former head of the garment workers union Unite Here, said in a 2011 New York Magazine profile.

But Ross could invite scrutiny from lawmakers for other business activities. In buying up distressed coal properties, for instance, he acquired a mine in Sago, West Virginia, where in 2006 an explosion killed a dozen workers. The mine was owned by a subsidiary of one of his companies, International Coal Group, Inc. Ross faced findings that he ignored dozens of safety concerns and citations.

The federal Mine Safety and Health Commission said the injury rate at the mine was significantly above the national average and cited the mine 208 times in 2005 for safety violations. The agency noted that less than half of the citations were for “significant and substantial” violations, and all but eight of the problems had been corrected before the accident.

Ross’s holding company had acquired the mine only seven weeks before the disaster. In an interview with Fox News a few days after the accident, Ross said claims that he cut back on safety measures at the mine or at any other distressed company he acquired were “totally fallacious,” adding that his company has never declined a penny’s worth of requests for safety purposes.

Federal investigators pointed to a lightning strike as the “most likely” ignition source for the blast but said that proper methane monitoring, among other things, could have prevented the disaster. The federal government imposed fines of $134,000, which were later reduced.

View Photo gallery Politicians, moguls and even a few Democrats: Trump's revolving door of post-election visitors Political observers have closely watched Donald Trump’s every move as he goes about the massive task of filling the thousands of political appointee jobs, with acute interest in the makeup of his Cabinet. Hundreds of people have called on Trump’s Manhattan office, rural New Jersey getaway and Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida over the past two months; here’s a day-by-day look at some of the people who have visited since Trump was elected.

“Whenever you have a disaster like that, it’s going to get re-litigated,” said Brookings’ Eisen.

Ross has also run into trouble with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In August, the SEC ordered Ross to pay a $2.3 million fine for failing to disclose certain fees to investors. He reportedly agreed to pay back all the fees with interest, in addition to the fine.

Despite his past transgressions, U.S. industry and workers would see Ross as a strong ally in enforcing the bulk of U.S. trade laws, giving him some appeal to labor-friendly lawmakers. That could make him less of a target in the confirmation process, where Democrats might put their focus on stopping more ideologically right-wing appointments.

Ross’s own take on the Trump team’s plans suggest a pro-U.S. worker stance that could play well to both the left and the right.

“If America’s trading partners continue to cheat, a President Trump will use all available means to defend American workers and American manufacturing facilities from such cheating, including tariffs,” he wrote in a paper on Trump’s economic plan released in September with economist Peter Navarro, another senior Trump adviser.

Ross added that tariffs would not be used as an endgame but rather “a negotiating tool to encourage our trading partners to cease cheating.”

But sparking an all-out trade war with a country like China might not be in the country’s, or the businessman’s best interests.

Ross returned from a trip to China in October where he told Bloomberg News he was scoping out opportunities in the country’s distressed asset market as Beijing goes through the painful process of trying to transition from an export-oriented market to a more consumer-driven economy.

That could give hope to U.S. businesses that desperately want to see the conclusion of a U.S.-China bilateral investment treaty.

“China will be an opportunity,” he said. “They have promulgated, when I was over there, some new rules for sorting out the excess capacity among the state-owned enterprises — the steel industry, the cement industry, even the electrical industry.”

Ross’ moves could also be called into question if it seems he is profiting off U.S. government efforts to pressure Beijing to become a more market-driven economy. As Commerce secretary, he would likely be involved in the formation of a new “global steel forum” the U.S., China and other countries agreed to create this year, which aims to find solutions to the global glut of steel.

U.S. steel producers blame China’s overproduction for adding excess capacity in the global steel market and driving down world prices. U.S. steel producers accuse Beijing of continuing to promote that with state subsidies.

As a Cabinet member with international dealings, Ross could also draw fire over the profits he made from financial crises in other countries, as well as any current overseas holdings that he has. At the height of the Eurozone crisis in 2011, Ross and a group of investors made a $1.5 billion investment to bail out the Bank of Ireland and save it from being taken over by the government. Three years later, he earned a profit by cashing out his shares for more than $600 million.

“I suspect Mr. Ross did not spend his career thinking of what the Senate would say about it,” said Graham of Investigative Group International.