Doug Palmer

Billionaire investor Wilbur Ross is President-elect Donald Trump's leading candidate for Commerce Secretary, apparently. Ross, 78, is the founder of the private equity firm WL Ross & Co., known for restructuring failed companies, and he's an economic adviser to President-elect Trump. Ross has been a vociferous critic of trade deals negotiated over the last 25 years, including the North American Free Trade Agreement, which Trump has vowed to leave unless Mexico and Canada agree to renegotiate on more favorable terms.

“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 said earlier in 2016. “Corporate America has adjusted to them by investing lots of capital offshore. … What we’re doing is we’re exporting jobs and importing products, instead of exporting products and keeping jobs.” Along with fellow President-elect Trump campaign adviser Peter Navarro, an University of California-Irvine economics and public policy professor, Ross has called for future trade deals to include automatic renegotiation triggers if trade gains “are not distributed fairly” and other “safeguards” including ironclad sanctions against currency manipulation, zero tolerance on intellectual property theft and stringent environmental and health and safety standards.