Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Understanding the President’s Cabinet: Commerce Secretary
Understanding the President’s Cabinet: Commerce Secretary
Jan 12, 2026 5:34 AM

Note: This is the eleventh in a weekly series of explanatory posts on the officials and agencies included in the President’s Cabinet. See the series introductionhere.

Cabinet position:Secretary of Commerce

Department:Department of Commerce

Current Secretary:Wilbur Ross

Succession:The Commerce Secretary is tenth in the presidential line of succession.

Department Mission:“The mission of the Department is to create the conditions for economic growth and opportunity. As part of the President’s economic team, the Secretary of Commerce serves as the voice of U.S. business within the Cabinet.” (Source)

Department Budget:$9.7 billion (FY 2017)

Number of employees:47,000

Primary Duties of the Secretary:The duties of the Commerce Secretary are to “foster, promote, and develop the foreign and merce, the mining, manufacturing, and fishery industries of the United States.” (Source)

Secretary Info

Secretary:Wilbur Ross

Previous occupation:Former Chairman and Chief Strategy Officer of WL Ross & Co. LLC (a private equity firm). Ross spend 55 years ininvestment banking and private equity.

Education:B.A. degree from Yale College and MBA degree at Harvard Business School.

Previous government experience:Previously served as privatization advisor to New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and was appointed by President Bill Clinton to the board of the U.S.-Russia Investment Fund.

Notable achievements:

• Ross has been chairman or lead director of more than panies operating in more than 20 different countries.

• Served as an officer of the New York State Democratic Party.

• Only person to be elected to both the Private Equity Hall of Fame and the Turnaround Management Hall of Fame.

• Was awarded the Order of Industrial Service Merit by President Kim Dae-jung for helping South Korea during its financial crisis.

• Was awarded The Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star by the Emperor of Japan.

• Served as Chairman of the Japan Society.

• Served as trustee of the Brookings Institution.

• Served as Chairman of the International Board of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, the Blenheim Foundation, the Magritte Museum in Brussels, and the Palm Beach Civic Association.

• Served as an Advisory Board Member of Yale University School of Management.

Notable quotes:

On trade: “I am not anti-trade. I am pro-trade. But I am pro-sensible trade, not trade that is detrimental to the American worker and to the domestic manufacturing base.”

On negotiating trade: “American negotiators keep making the same mistakes. Besides hurting our workers, chronic trade deficits stifle economic growth while we now owe China and other trading partners trillions in U.S. Treasury debt.”

On free trade: “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.”

Previous and ing posts in this series:Secretary of State,Secretary of the Treasury,Secretary of Education, Secretary of Labor,Secretary of Defense, Attorney General,Secretary of the Interior, Secretary of Agriculture, Secretary of Commerce,Secretary of Health and Human Services,Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Secretary of Transportation, Secretary of Energy,Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Secretary of Homeland Security

Previous Article：3 charts that will help you make the moral case for limited government Next Article：John Stonestreet doesn’t want to talk about sex
Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
14 can’t-miss predictions for 2017
At the beginning of 2016, piled a list that included 1,034 predictions for ing year. I later went through and narrowed it down to the top 500 that I was absolutely certain would happen. Even after cutting the list down, though, I only managed to achieve a 67 percent accuracy rate. (Unfortunately, I forgot to post that list in public so it is difficult to verify. You’ll just have to take my word for it.) This year, in an attempt...
It’s time to kill the penny
Over the past twelve months there have been considerable discussions of monumental public policy issues. But before 2016 ends we need to consider one more of (in)significant importance: what to do about the penny. As the Wall Street Journal noted earlier this week, in fiscal 2015, the cost to produce a single penny was 1.43 cents. In 2014, that cost rose to 1.66 cents. Despite years of effort to wring costs out of production, it is doubtful the copper-coated coin...
Thomas Sowell’s escape from socialism
Earlier today I mentioned that economist Thomas Sowell was retiring from writing his syndicated column. For decades Sowell, age 86, has been one of the leading thinkers in the libertarian and conservative circles. But what is less known is the intellectual journey he took from being an advocate of socialism to a champion of free markets. This past summer I wrote an article for The Stream examining on how Sowell thought his way into Marxism, then back out again into...
5 victims of the $15 minimum wage
As protests for a $15-per-hour minimum wage continue to rage across the country, cities like Seattle and states like California and New York have already begun to adopt such schemes. But alas, prices are not play things, and such measures are bound to reap a range of deleterious effects, from raised consumer prices to increased unemployment to reduced working hours to outright business closures. Contrary to the popular narrative, those consequences tend to hit small businesses and less-skilled workers first...
Pope Francis and his fans on the left
Since 2013 when the Argentine prelate Jorge Bergoglio officially became the head of the Catholic Church, he has emerged as a key figure in the progressive movement. Even though Pope Francis does not claim to be a part of any political movement, it is clear that he is representative of the views that many leftists hold. With his emergence e much criticism from Catholics who hold opposing views on issues such as environmentalism and the market economy. Acton Institute Director...
Top 10 PowerBlog posts for 2016
As e near to the end of another year, we want to thank readers of PowerBlog for menting, and sharing our posts over the past twelve months. If you’re a new reader we encourage you to catch up by checking out our top ten most popular posts for 2016: 1. Work is a gift our kids can handle Joseph Sunde The abundant prosperity of the modern age has brought many blessings when es to child-rearing and child development, offering kids...
Commentary: Power and the poor
In this week’s Acton Commentary I examine the foundations of what is today identified as the “preferential option for the poor” in writings that appeared 125 years ago, Pope Leo’sRerum Novarum and Abraham Kuyper’s “The Social Question and the Christian Religion.” These two texts have appeared in an anniversary volume,Makers of Modern Christian Social Thought: Leo XIII and Abraham Kuyper on the Social Question, now available from the Acton Book Shop. In the introduction to that volume, I touch on...
The end of black conservatism?
On December 27, 2016, at the age of 86, Thomas Sowell published his last column. After publishing dozens of books and hundreds of columns, Dr. Sowell’s retirement may mark the beginning of the end of an era of black intellectuals who were champions of political and economic liberty. Other black scholars like Walter Williams, W.B. Allen, and Shelby Steele are all in the 70s or 80s and there does not seem to be a cadre of like-minded black scholars in...
Humbug or helpful? UK not forcing shops to close on holiday
Although Americans have lost the notion altogether, British tradition still remembers that Christmas is a season that begins, rather than ends, on December 25. In addition to Christmas, many businesses close their doors on December 26 in observance of Boxing Day. Over the years, the holiday has also e the UK’s third-largest shopping day, generating £3.74 billion last year. Since shoppers need workers to serve them, more retailers have remained open each year. This spurred more than 200,000 Brits to...
The Year in Acton Commentary 2016
Every Wednesday we publish the Acton Commentary, a weekly article that covers topics related to Acton’s mission. As es to a close we thought it would be worth highlighting the top mentaries produced by Acton Institute staffers and contributors over the past year. 1.Global elites put Christianity in the crosshairs Global governance ideology is the intellectual stepchild of Marxist materialist thought, says Robert F. Gorman. The term global governance refers to the political dimension of globalization. Here the question is...
Related Classification
RELIGION & LIBERTY
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
About
Terms and Conditions Privacy policy Cookie Settings Contact Us
Services
Login register
mreligion RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE RELIGION & LIBERTY
Links
zpostcode Recruit weather mreligion Yellowpages sport constellation shopping name game directory literature Word tour furnish Lottery tftnews lyrics News digital car dir Edu Finance
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved