China challenges await Trump’s billionaire commerce secretary Wilbur Ross, after easy confirmation

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Newly confirmed US Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross arrives for a meeting hosted by US President Donald J. Trump with CEOs of manufacturing companies, in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington last week. Photo: EPA

Published: 12:09pm, 28 Feb 2017Updated: 10:25pm, 28 Feb 2017

Billionaire investor Wilbur Ross easily won confirmation as US commerce secretary on Monday, clearing President Donald Trump’s top trade official to start work on renegotiating trade relationships with China and Mexico.

The US Senate voted 72-27 to confirm the 79-year-old corporate turnaround expert’s nomination, with strong support from Democrats.

Ross is set to become an influential voice in Trump’s economic team after helping shape the president’s opposition to multilateral free trade deals such as the now-scrapped Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Ross drew votes from 19 Democrats and one independent, partly because of an endorsement from the United Steelworkers union for his efforts in restructuring bankrupt steel companies in the early 2000s, which saved numerous plants and thousands of jobs.

Vice President Pence, second from right, Commerce Secretary-designate Wilbur Ross, second from right, and White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, right, listen to President Donald Trump during a meeting with House and Senate legislators in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. Photo: Washington Post photo by Jabin Botsford

Ross was criticised by some Democrats as another billionaire in a Trump Cabinet that says it is focused on the working class, and for being a “vulture” investor who has eliminated some jobs. Reuters reported last month that Ross’s companies had shipped some 2,700 jobs overseas since 2004.

The investor will oversee a sprawling agency with nearly 44,000 employees responsible for combating the dumping of imports below cost into US markets, collecting census and critical economic data, weather forecasting, fisheries management, promoting the United States to foreign investors and regulating the export of sensitive technologies.