From The ‘King of Bankruptcy’ to Trump's Cabinet | Wilbur Ross - Former US Secretary of Commerce

Intro American dream has always been work hard keep at it succeed and you end up being more prosperous and more happy than even your parents were usually within a problem there also lies an opportunity our educational system I think is failing the younger generation we're not doing a good job teaching kids what they need to know to have a good career entrepreneurship takes a lot of work if somebody is starting their own business it's not a question do I work 40 hours 41 or 42 you're starting your own business and you don't even think about am I working overtime a lot of people gotten Rich collecting rent I don't know anybody who got rich paying rent big lesson is the only person who can hold you back is you yourself welcome to success St story I'm your host Scott Clary the success story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast Network now HubSpot is the resource that you need to tap into if you are an entrepreneur it's no secret that starting a business is hard even if you have an amazing idea bringing it to life can feel overwhelming with hubspot's new entrepreneurship kit you can go from idea to IPO with the help of a company that knows a thing or two about growing better this allinclusive kit gives you step-by-step guidance and Frameworks to help you Crush every stage of starting a business with tools tailored to help all steps of the entrepreneurial journey is packed with templates for project management emails skill development templates there's also a solopreneur guide It's got freelancing pricing worksheets and lots more that you can use to get up and running immediately and best of all it's free with expert guidance and Frameworks from HubSpot starting a business doesn't have to be hard so don't wait to start yours go to hubspot.com n to download the guide right [Music] Wilbur Ross' Journey now thank you for coming on I'm excited to do this I want to start just to understand because you've had you've had a life that's been filled with so many different things that you've worked on and so many different things that you've built I want to just go back and understand as a child what was an inflection point or a moment that happened or a series of moments that happened that sort of set you up and put you on the road to where you are today okay well that's a very good question and I'm delighted you started off with it but when I was a kid I was very scrawny undersized for my age in a bookworm so I was a perfect candidate to be a victim for bullies and for a while while I was getting bullied and then my father got me a punching bag and some instruction and that accomplished two things one made me feel more self-confident and two the few times I had to use the instruction it pretty well solved the problem so it both gave me more self-confidence and reduce the need for actual fighting so that was one very very big step the other one was when I was about 10 years old my paternal grandfather took me to a recreation hall he was a great bowler in fact he bowled in his lifetime three 300 games well for me at my age the bowling ball was too heavy so I couldn't do that with him but the recck hall also had a shooting range and so he took me down there to see if that would be interesting turned out I had a very good aptitude for it and I became a real Marksman and that's what led to the most interesting second turning point that was this I became such a good Marksman that at age 14 I won the New Jersey state championship and it ag6 I set the US Junior record over the Olympic small bo rifle course and they were trying Winchester was trying to get me to drop out of school for a while and just spend fulltime shooting to get ready for the actual Olympics well that event which was an outdoor event was unique and that I was great that it we said set the record but the spotter they had given me to make sure I fired the right number of rounds because you had a Target the real Target and a fake Target the fake Target was so that as the wind adjusted you could change your sight make sure you were corresponding well he undercounted so it was a bitter sweet Victory here I set a national record as a young kid but I did so with firing one round less than I could have fired so it would have been even a better score that taught me a lesson that is stuck with me ever since namely you can delegate Authority but at the end of the day responsibility stays with you so that got me to be kind of a microman manager uh in later life and I really try to supervise very carefully the people that are helping me so when you look at your career and sort of like these these moments that gave you confidence and showed your own ability and and and get and really just turned you from a boy into a man at the end of the day how did those impact your career your life what you chose to work on because obviously now well I mean I mean even years ago you were known as the king of bankruptcy but you didn't start there that's a that's after a career of a lot of work and a lot of ups and downs and wins and losses that gets you to that point and then you go from private to public to serving the government um I'm very curious as you started your career at least and obviously it's a long career so we don't have to do the whole thing but what were some of the what were some of the things that pushed you down the paths that you went on well in the very beginning I went to Yale and then directly to Harvard Business School and I had been in ROTC at Yale because in those days we had Universal military training the draft and I thought it'd be better to go in as an officer than as an enlisted man so they gave me a deferment so I could go directly to HBS so I go in the military and I was most to being 6 months active duty 7 and A2 years resered but Along Came the Cuban Missile Crisis so I ended up spending a year and a half in the army during that period my employer to be a very hot money manager called emry du died died two weeks before I was scheduled to show up for work and on his death bed sold The Firm to a very wealthy client called Robert winrop from the Massachusetts winrop family they agreed uh to hire me anyway so now I show up the firm is now called WP de B so I changed employers before I even got my first paycheck two weeks later in came Jack dorren who then was the EO Campbell Soup and between him and the pension fund they had several billion dollars of money with us so they had a nice chitchat over lunch and then Darren said Bob uh why do my accounts have so much lucky Friday Silver Mines in them and Mr Winship turned to me and said wber do my accounts have lucky Friday so my as well and I said yes sir they do all of our accounts have some lucky Friday silver mine and then explained why well that made it clear to dorren that this was not the same kinds of handon Senior Management that he'd been used to before emry Dev died so the following Monday they pulled all $3 billion out from under our management so Bob wiri a little later that week was at a board meeting of City Bank he had been on the board of City Bank and he the CEO of City Bank on hearing his problem having bought this sperman just lost this big account and how embarrassing it was he said Bob Sam Milbank is Desiring to pull out his money from a nice Old Line firm called wood strs GE a few B million more dollars in buy him out you'll call it Wood Brothers and windrum and you'll never be embarrassed again so he did that you Hard Work for Early Career Professionals know as you as you walk through your career um and we I I I agree with this as well and it's something that I've seen youve spoken about you obviously believe uh the concept of hard work and you speak about the this in your book it's obvious some it's obviously something that's very important to you talk to me about the concept of hard work and talk to me about it from the perspective of when you started your career and what you had to put in versus perhaps even what you see now with people in their careers sure well uh we had been a barely mid middle class family and then when I was at Yale my father died and since I had two younger siblings that my mom who was a third grade school teacher had to support and hopefully help get a real education so as a result of all that I had to work my way through school so I went on uh Aid at Yale and did a variety of odd jobs to uh get spend money and to pay tuition and all that so um that taught me that there's no bad thing about working hard because I was taking a regular curriculum and yet had to do all these jobs because at Yale when you got student aid you didn't just get the aid you had the worked out of Billing System and you had to work so many hours a week for the University to make up for the fact that they were giving you a and then I had to find odd jobs for spend money so that was when I started really working hard because y was obviously a challenging curriculum and when I went through to the business school at Harvard it too was a challenging curriculum but again I didn't have any money and so I had to do odd job so I wrote articles for a magazine called Financial world I wrote the anonymous research reports for a little brokerage firm and I was even a census taker during the deenal census going door to door uh trying to get people to fill out their census forms and that was a real challenge because they gave me the bad section of Boston to go to so I'm wearing this little white Skool Patrol a sort of shoulder thing with a big make believe silver badge on it well in that section of Boston when you show up at a door with a badge if they open the door at all they're more like have a dog come out after you than they are so that you interview them so that taught me a lot about the fact that you can survive an arduous gold day plus a lot of part-time jobs uh that you needed to do to survive so it become a became a habit and it's like anything else once you get used to it and once it's a routine that you work long hours and hard hours it doesn't become so challenging what bothers me about today is that the the kids don't like the idea of work I found a while ago there's actually a Reddit site that had six million members totally devoted to antiw work and there would be postings on it one very similar to one I'm quoting now it said I just can't force myself to go to work anymore so the notion that work is an aberant behavior is something you have to be forced to do or force yourself to do rather than being a natural thing and a part of the whole growing up and adulthood process is is troubling because everybody now wants things easy quick not do any work and you see people saying things very real bright young people saying things like I'm only going to do the bare necessary amount of work so I don't lose my job or they'll say I don't want a real job I just want to do gigs and I'll just do enough gigs to get by I had the idea of just getting by and not liking work is the antithesis of the American dream the American dream has always been work hard keep at it succeed and you end up being more prosperous and more happy than even your parents were so to me it's a very very sad phenomenon that there's this attitude the younger people today are also very fragile of with many of them you say boo they wet their pants or they go hide in a safe room or something like that it's it's a wrong system there are challenges there are problems that everybody will face but usually within a problem there also lies an opportunity and if they were sensible they would look through the problem find the opportunity grab it and advance and themselves why do you think what do you think caused this mindset I have a Shifting Mindsets couple I have a couple ideas but I don't know I don't know if it was a whole bunch of small little things or if it was a cultural shift but all those people on that Reddit thread will say well there's no way we're going to be as as happy as our parents we can't even afford uh a attached home anymore and cost of living has gone up and salaries haven't kept up and now if I want to live in a city where I could get potentially a great job like a you know a New York or any any coastal city really any big major US city uh well the rent is through the roof and that's just for a single bedroom apartment so all of these things probably stressed people out but maybe there was a breaking point and I don't know what that breaking point was when people just threw up their hands and they said you know what I'm not going to I'm not going to try and do and build the life that my parents had I'm going to try and build a different life and I think maybe that's what led to this mindset I don't know if you have ideas or opinions on what caused yes I have a couple of thoughts one we've been through a period of unique prosperity in the country and as a result a lot of parents have made more income than they ever thought that they could make and that meant the kids had a very full fairly easy lifetime themselves so I think in one sense our prosperity kind of spoiled the picture for young people but I think there are also a couple other phenomena that contributed to it particularly the government policies during the pandemic and even leading up to it where quite a few people in this country are now being paid more for not working than they ever earned when they were working and that creates a very bad mindset it creates a mindset of entitlement that you don't really have to do any work government will just take care of you so I think that's a second factor and I think a third factor is our educational system I think is fa in the younger generation and the generation that immediately preceded it we're not doing a good job teaching kids what they need to know to have a good career when I was a kid there were two tracks that people would be on as you probably know something like twoth thirds of adult Americans do not have a college degree but uh in the old days there was a track for kids who were headed to college and one for ones who were not and the ones who were not they had a class called manual training we they they the chop class I don't know quite why and that taught them skills that would let them become uh electricians plumbers Appliance people all kinds of Trades many of which turned out to be very high paying Trad so it wasn't that it was condemning them to a bad life you look at what you pay an hour for a plumber or an electrician there plenty of room for good economic result from that but the our country now has the least vocational training of any oecd country the leads in the high schools and the middle schools no longer even offer uh manual training courses just not part of the periculum so that disadvantages the kids who are not on a college track for the ones who are on the college track they're also being disadvantaged because we're not teaching the fundamentals we're not teaching in the lower grades or arithmetic reading and writing and most of those skills Young Americans in grammar school rank around 30th in the world how can we be staying as the number one world country when we rank 30th in primary education and it gets worse when they get to high school when they get to high school they're no longer teaching high school math physics chemistry all those skills that you need to survive in a technologically advancing uh country so I think it's partly a self-inflicted wound uh in the school system it's partly that their parents had such an easy time of it that the kids got spoiled I've been amazed with how many young people don't get a summer job when they're out of school forget about getting a job while they're in school they don't even have summer job they'll Ling around on the beach I don't know why the parents permit that when my two girls were teenagers and one of them first got a driver's license the question came up what would they do for a summer job we go out to the Hamptons in the summer what would they do so I bought bought a food truck a stainless steel food truck got them the food concession for one of the beaches and they work pretty hard during the whole day because nothing like making hamburgers and hot dogs and cutting up fruits and everything and then serving the customer because I wanted them to learn even though they would not have to do that just to make tuition I wanted them to learn you have to be a productive person you're not just going to sit around uh on the beach I don't think there's enough of that in the parental attitude so I think it's a whole series of factors that have led to it but I think it's a very bad phenomenon hey guys Scott here I just wanted to take a quick moment to say a heartfelt thanks to every single one of you six years of this show and it's really all because of you your listens your support your shares it's what keeps this thing going when I started I had no idea how big this would get how many lives we touch the stories we share the lessons that we learn together it's truly humbling and I believe that we're building something really special here a community where no one has to reinvent the wheel We're All in This Together learning and growing and here's my ask if you love this show it's made a difference for you please share it with somebody who needs it tell a friend post on social whatever works it's the best way to keep this thing going strong bring on even better guests and share more life changing wisdom and you can find us on all the spots so you can go to success story podcast.com if you like listening to podcast if you like video you can go to YouTube It's youtube.com/ ccot declar or the newsletter newsletter. Scot dear.com just spread the word I'm eternally grateful for each and every one of you let's keep learning let's keep growing and let's keep making this world a little bit better together all right let's get back to the show very interesting because I mean I don't even How Worried Should We Be About the US Economy? consider myself that old I'm I'm 34 and I remember during University I would work during the day and I would push my classes I'm also came from I didn't come from a you know a hard life growing up like I didn't really have to concern myself with tuition but for me it was more about I want to get my career started early and I want to figure out how to get some reps in and and get some experience so I would push my classes to tonight and weekends so that I could work during the day but it's it's a very slippery slope now and it's only listen that that that was only a couple years ago and it seems like there's been this entire culture shift I mean again you came from a generation you know previous to mine where you had to work there was no there there wasn't the economic prosper it that I grew up with when you were a kid like you had to figure out life and work and whatnot and at least for the majority of people so if you look forward it must be very concerning for you where this country is going if we don't find a way to turn it around well it it is very concerning because unlike when I grew up I was born in the depression 1937 and that was more or less the peak of the depression so it was a very different time as you point out but um in those days we were unchallenged as the world's leading economic power now there are lots of challenges you obviously have China being very aggressive pushing education very hard and having very hard work very dedicated population so now there's the added challenge for our country how do we sustain ourselves as a number one power or even as a shared power when you have a country like China where education is highly prized the people are very hardworking and where they have a real Mercantile instinct if we lose our entrepreneurship then it's really going to be over with we Lo if we lose Innovation and Entrepreneurship well entrepreneurship takes a lot of work if somebody is starting their own business it's not a question do I work 40 hours or 39 or 41 or 42 you're starting your own business you're in it you're in it up to your eyeballs and you don't even think about am I working overtime so the danger is that these other societal problems that you and I have been discussing may very well spill over into the entrepreneurship that created this country and one alarming Trend in that regard of the institutionally backed Venture Capital companies in the last last 10 years 40% have a foreign born person who's either the CEO or the co-ceo 40% so when we think about that it's great that we've had that influx of very entrepreneur and skilled foreigners but it also suggest that we'd not have as much entrepreneurship if it warrant for the foreigners and that's a scary thing that would need more and more foreign help just to keep going um I mean you you've seen you I The Threat to Hard Work in the Social Media Era mean I think that if you look at some of the CEOs of of major tech companies you see people that come from other parts of the world that move to the US that take up these positions again which is great but you you do have to have a culture of Entrepreneurship of of hard work working of uh not being afraid to build things and fail and I think that we're so we're moving so far from people being willing to do uncomfortable work that we're not even talking about like you said entrepreneurship we're just talking about people working a 9 to5 Monday to Friday job because if you're going to if you're going to be a successful entrepreneur like I came from a 9 to-5 environment and I worked hard there and I realized that I wasn't moving fast enough and my career wasn't progressing as quick as I wanted to so then I'm going to take that into my own hands and instead of working 9 to5 Monday to Friday I'm working 247 365 but at least I can now move at my own pace but the 9 to5 was cuz I didn't have entrepreneurial parents the nin to5 was this this uh a little bit of like an incubation for me as a professional to then say okay this is great but I want to go farther if I had never even had the the exposure to the 9 to5 or if I was I see some people traveling all over the world and working the gig economy again there's nothing inherently wrong with that but if a culture promotes that and social media promotes lifestyle and all that I think that I think that again another component that you didn't mention is we look on social we think other people's lives are so great and how can they work two hours a week and make you know a million a year well that's not reality but social media is a megaphone and it broadcasts this reality and people assume it's the reality so then they try and architect their lives like that and amongst all the other things you mentioned it's just a very um we're in a we're in a a dangerous place I think because there's so much influence telling us how we should live or what hard work work should be or shouldn't be and I think that it's I think we're kind of uh messing up the minds of a younger generation as to what life can look like well I I agree with that and I think you see it in another context it used to be people's dream was own your own home that was a big big dream get married have a kid own your own home was part of the cultural scene now people are not so interested in owning things they seem to settle for having the use of things uh there's even an industry now where people are renting their clothes rather than buying them I me what could be more weird and what could be in efficient than renting your clothes because you know the guy renting them to you is making a high rate of return well where is his rate of return coming from is coming from you because you're such a fool you won't even want to front end the price of your clothing and so I think it's gotten to a very very extreme uh Point there's nothing wrong with wanting to own things and for most families owning the home was Central to their ability to develop some semblance of wealth because tend to appreciate over time my father had a pretty good saying even though he was not wealthy he said I know a lot of people have gotten Rich collecting rent I don't know anybody who got rich paying rent and that's a philosophy that the people don't seem to have everything is measured in terms of monthly payment not am I ear owning something not am I getting somewhere not am I getting ahead it's a whole attitudinal thing that that as you point out is very very dangerous you know what I'm actually I'm really concerned because it seems to be compounded with shortsightedness what will happen is people will make enough money to rent their whole life and then what happens when you can't work anymore or when you have some when you when you get sick or or when you just of old age you can't put in those hours or the cognitive performance just isn't there or the physical performance isn't there I mean we haven't really seen that generation get to that age yet and that's going to be scary unless something is done because the generation that is of the age that can no longer work most of them will have pensions or they'll have some sort or they came from the mentality of I want to buy my house I want to invest um yeah it's it's very scary that people that are you know 70 80 90 now did not rent their clothes when they were growing up well a sociologist that I met at a cocktail party had a interesting encapsulation of that he said one of the real problems of the younger generation is the the inability to postpone immediate gratification that's what leads to they want everything quick easy now very accessible the idea of saving up to buy a home is quite different from that that generally especially for younger people used to mean some postponement of immediate gratification because you put away a little money put away a little money and then you got to do something uh by way of a home with it but now they're happy to rent the house happy to run a car when they need it happy to rent even their clothes and it's a dead end street because what they're doing is raising their current cost of living to the point where they're not going to be able as you point out to have something to take care of them later and that in turn is producing and encouraging the very unfortunate relationship between the population and government remember the old Communist Manifesto the way to make socialism permanent is first of all get to where a majority of the adult population pays no tax well we're just about there second is get to the point where a majority of the adult population depends on government for its livelihood that's where we're starting to head with all these programs and once we get through that second thing if we do unfortunately and most people pay no tax and are dependent on government forget it society as we've known it our culture as we've known it and tragically our economies as we've known it will be no more talk to me about actually just a I have I want to talk about your transition to public service but can you just explain that point that because I understand being dependent on government but can you explain the pay no tax uh Point well it it is arithmetically true that almost half of battled Americans do not pay any tax because they have all these tax credits in refund when the government says I'm going to give you a tax credit for having a child let's say now that may be a worthwhile idea to help people have children but what it works work works out to in reality is if you don't have enough income that you're really paying tax you get that money directly so instead of being what it's presented as which is just a tax credit it's not it's an actual gift to the people who don't have taxable income and in some cases even if they do it's small and again it becomes a tax a cash payment rather than a tax credit so it it encourages the wrong Behavior basically yes yes and uh I'm not opposed to child care I'm not opposed to people having families obviously those are important but when you create those two things nobody pays tax and people are dependent on government now you've changed the whole society and it it's a very very slippery slope because the theory of it is that somehow the rest of society can afford not only to maintain themselves but pay the bills to government to maintain the half that aren't working that aren't productive well that's a very different world from the world that we used to have I just want to take a second and thank the HubSpot podcast Network for Sponsor: The Product Boss Podcast supporting success story The HubSpot podcast network has incredible podcasts like the product boss hosted by Jack L Snider and Mina Klo siep if you want to take your physical product sales and strategy to the next level to create your dream life you need to listen to the product boss they sit down for an hour they do a workshop style podcast they're going to talk about everything that you need to know to uplevel yourself social media marketing if you're a consumer package Goods if you have any sort of physical widget you need to tune into the product boss wherever you get your podcast mhm that makes sense I understand um Why Work in Government? talk to me about I mean I I I've I've had this conversation with a lot of people why somebody would want to go work in the government go work in public service because listen this is not like you needed this for your career you've made a lot of money doing what you're very good at and government always seems like it just seems like a lot of headache it seems like your life is picked apart people criticize you no one's ever happy with you this is like the life of of government so at this point in your career I mean you've made it by any anyone's standards what was the purpose in your mind of going to serve the government going to serve the people it it was several things but first of all it came at a point in my life where I could afford to do it because I had made enough to take care of myself forever and forever so there was the potential for doing it and making the economic sacrifice uh to go into government and in fact when I had my sort of job interview for the cabinet post with President Trump and the others it was weird because it was the first time in my life I was ever eager to have a job that paid a tiny fraction of what my old job had paid but nonetheless I felt it was at a point in time where a I could afford B more importantly I felt that what Trump was trying to do was what the country needed I felt that he was the only one of the either Democratic or republican candidates who understood how badly Abus middle class and lower middle class working American were in favor of people who were not working the other candidates didn't even understand it so I felt the only one who's going to try to fix this is somebody who at least understands the problem the other candidates didn't even know that it was a problem so I felt there was a societal need for somebody to try to help fix this problem because I I love this country country's been very good to me and I felt it was time to try to give back as part of an Enterprise in the government to regain some of what we had been losing and I mean when it when you announced that you were even supporting uh Trump I think from what I remember that was a little bit of a a surprise to to the public yes it was um what happened back then this was before the Republican primaries in uh the 2016 uh election um I was on squawkbox in in the morning and toward the end of the interview one of them said if Trump is the Presidential nominee for the Republicans will you support him and they were thinking my answer would be no because at that point most of Wall Street was Ross’ Key Policies in Office anti-trump and strangely a lot of Wall Street remains Democratic I would say a majority of the senior people have been uh Democrats I I don't quite understand why but anyhow so that shocked people and then I explained why my theory that he was the only one who understood the societ societal problem that you and I have been discussing and that in turn led to my getting involved with the campaign so I started doing editorials mostly in Regional newspapers he would send me as a surrogate to debate with the left-wing people uh things like that and then ultimately uh he asked me to go the cabinet talk to me about some of the uh some of the policies that that you implemented while you were in in his government but also I also want to understand going forward obviously right now we we'll try and keep this interview Evergreen but uh you know in a in a in a couple months we're going to see a very new uh US government and I'm curious what do we have to do going forward to sort of continue the work that you did well fortunately unlike most of the Biden cabinet people uh Gina Rando who is my successor has pretty well continued the Tariff policies and the export control policies that I put into effect during the Trump Administration so for the moment the Democrats have been relatively supportive of the Tariff initiatives and uh denying potential enemies access to high-tech materials sanctions things of that sort so so far it hasn't been a problem what worries me in case it's camela Harris is a lot of things one of which is we have no idea what her trade policy these are going to be she's not made any real statement about trade so I can't judge what she might do or not do the second thing though I think she's more interested in changing the educational system away from what I think it should be which is the manual training and the high-tech training she is more interested in making it a sociological instrument making it very woke W woke is really in many ways the direct antithesis of uh the American dream because woke says you should be embarrassed to be a citizen of the United States wol says uh you your forbearers were abusers and that's a really bad thing and we need retribution so I'm worried that while I think the educational system needs reforming in the direction of going back to what it used to be I think her visualization of education is very different and it's resulting in young people having very little understanding of what's really going on and there was a university somewhere in the midwest that took a survey of people 18 to 25 then it asked them a whole variety of questions two that struck me as really dangerous one was the question who is Andrew Jackson as you know he was very controversial person the most most popular answer was Michael's brother wow he had nothing nothing to do with each other the second question course not second question that he asked was where was slavery invented and the most popular answer there was in the United States now it's not only historically inaccurate by thousands of years but it's it's also inaccurate by thousands of miles and these young people genuinely did not understand the answer to either of those questions now there were many others they also had funny answers to but when your misconception is that the US is what created the the whole slavery problem you don't understand where anything is coming I found when I was in government one of the tasks I occasionally did was swearing citizens naturalized citizens uh who had come legally into this country and when you're a legal immigrant seeking citizenship you have to study a lot you have to study about the Constitution and I concluded that the legal immigrants who became citizens were better informed about our country than most young people and that's really an unfortunate thing they were also wonderful in that their eyes were filled with happy tears when they became citizens they were proud as could be whereas a lot of young people now uh they question whether the US is a good place they question set their own sexuality they question all kinds of things what they don't question is why am I not learning what I should learn to be a productive atle and therefore I'm very worried about the direction in which camela Harris might very well take this country you know you mentioned something Why Do Younger Generations Criticize the US? that's very interesting to me and I never quite understood it because all the different things that people question I never understood why anybody would question if the US was a good place and I see that I mean there's a lot of things people question like you just mentioned people question their own sexuality their pronouns you know what they want to do with their life their career those are whatever you can you can make a comment on whether or not those are are things that people should question or shouldn't question that's more personal my biggest issue is it seems like there's so much hate for a for the US from from a younger generation and I don't I don't understand it I don't get where that came from because the US is giving these people all the abilities in the world to question all these different things and to choose all these different things like this is the country that's affording you that opportunity I never understood that and I actually you know just to give you perspective I'm Canadian so I actually have to go through uh an immigration process and I've gone probably spent about at this point coming in through a Visa and then going through this Visa process and then eventually getting green card um probably $40 $50,000 in fees and applications and just time spent and getting referral like it's a very argu as process but very grateful I mean now my business is down here now my connections are down here network is down here and and Canada is like listen Canada is not a third world country Canada is Canada but even the contrast between Canada and the US I see a 100x more opportunity and and and and I my career moves exponentially quicker so it's just interesting I can't for any reason understand how people can hate the US it's very confusing to me well if you really thought that the only reason that was slavery in this world was the United States that we literally invented it that would probably give you a guilty feeling certainly teaching people that that's the case is meant to give you a guilty but it's not even true it's not even close to true it's it's so far from reality oh of course so but remember gbls the big propaganda Minister under Hitler he said if you you tell a big lie often enough and if you can control the media so that they don't dispute it too much then it becomes the truth then the real truth becomes a lie and I think that's what's happening because the young people and our educational system both are totally intolerant of any other opinion and if you try to talk to a young p and say that it's just not true that slavery was invented here you get a real argument if if they will even respond rather than just walk away so there's an intolerance to disagreement and you see it on the campuses if if a non leftwing Professor wants to give a talk on a campus they get schol they get picketed and very few uh colleges will even let them come so whereas you would think educations of learning were meant to be open to different ideas now they're very closed to them and in a funny way the extreme left and the extreme right have that one thing in common that they're both intolerant of any View other than their own extremes and it's a very worrisome thing because it's starting to tear apart the heart of society you saw with this young kid trying to assassinate Trump we see it in all kinds of violent Outburst there's a real anger that's been developed in people partly I think because they feel hopeless about their own careers as we talked about earlier but also there's been inculcated in them by the school systems this negativism toward the us netism toward Traditional Values and that's got to be fixed and so my biggest worry I think our educational system is more of a danger to this country than China is I think it's more of a danger than Russia is I think it's more of a danger than Iran is because those are things we're going to have to cope with but our educational problems are self-inflicted wounds and the most crazy way to die is through a self-inflicted WB but I think that's I think that's the most concerning way and it's actually interesting because you talk about universities not allowing uh right-wing thought leaders on the campus I was always under the assumption that history was history and then University and college was a place for debate and and conversation and critical thinking about policies moving forward not not about trying to rewrite world history this is a very very strange because if somebody who's a a right-wing I say that in air quotes because there's some very moderate thinkers and and very middleof the road thinkers that I think are now labeled as more right-wing than they really are but um I mean even Trump was a Democrat he he he he lived in New York City his whole life like he was he was always a Democrat he was always a very forward thinking person um but you see these you see that these people are being turned into like right-wing uh individuals when really they're just trying to they're just trying to provide a different lens or a different perspective on on what's happening in society which I always thought was as as as a as an individual I want to get access to as much information as possible and I want to hear arguments and I want to hear debate and I think that's how Society moves forward I think that's I think that's healthy to hear as much information and to study and to research and to do your own due diligence this is the way that I grew up this is the way that my career moved forward just it's not just business information it's it's getting societal and cultural and political and financial information from all these different people it just made me a better individual well it's true and what when I was a young teenager there was a very popular TV show that consisted of debates between Bill Buckley a very right-wing very scholarly right-winger and Gore vial very intelligent left-wing one and it was the kind of show that no longer would appear on any television station or any probably even any cable network it was an think an hourong thing they were both different in their thinking they both probably disliked each other as individuals so made for good TV but the point was in those days the media welcomed debate and now it it's not just the editorial page that expresses opinion the news columns are really editorials for the most part and that's wrong that's not what media news should be the news should be what it is and just as you said history is what it is it is what it was it shouldn't be tampered with it's it's a factual thing but they change it I want to take a Sponsor: LinkedIn Jobs second and thank the sponsor of today's episode LinkedIn now let me share a quick story when I was looking to hire from my team I needed someone who not only had the skills but also fit our company culture I turned to LinkedIn jobs and it made the process seamless the quality of candidates I found was exceptional and it saved me tons of time having quality candidates to interview is essential and Linkedin jobs makes it incredibly easy to find them LinkedIn isn't just a job board it's a platform that connects you with professionals you won't find anywhere else even those who aren't actively searching but might be open to the perfect role and did you know that 70% of LinkedIn users don't visit other leading job sites if you're not looking on LinkedIn you're missing these candidates plus 86% of small businesses get a qualified candidate within 24 hours on LinkedIn and they're always is looking to make the process easier they even launched the feature to help you write job descriptions so if you're ready to find your next grade hire post your job for free at linkedin.com Excellence that's linkedin.com Excellence to post your job for free terms and conditions apply what are you Global Risks Today you know when you look forward um we just touched very briefly on on Russia China Iran and they of course they're not all the same entity there are new is to how each each one of those uh Nations builds their country and interacts with the us but going forward on a global level what are some thoughts about biggest risks biggest concerns things that the US should be aware of things that the average person should be aware of uh based on your experience well when on the geop political sense what I'm worried the most about is Russia China and Iran seem to be getting more and more into the becoming the AIS Powers they've seem to band together in a lot of activities and if you look back to what led to World War II there was treaties between uh Germany and Japan that's that started it they started a mutual defense treaty Germany and Italy did the same thing then what next happened was Germany made an agreement with Poland with Russia to a mutual defense agreement and what they didn't disclose was that part of the agreement was to divide up Poland so two weeks after they signed that agreement Germany invaded Poland overran it and did split it up with the Russians so what worries me is more and more they're operating jointly now why is that a problem that's a problem because Germany itself and even Japan were very small economies relative to the US so when you put even the two of them together didn't come near ours but China is already about more than 2third of our economy you add to that Russia you add to that Iran and you have the potential that we could become engaged in World War I and be fighting it on three fronts fighting it in the mid east fighting it in in the Asian sector uh and fighting it in Europe that's the really scary thing and it's why it bothers me that the Democrats don't seem to understand my attitude about bully remember I said a bully needs a willing victim well the US is acting nowadays more like a willing victim than like anything else we beg Iran to make a treaty with us and I think it was a National Disgrace that the Iranians few weeks ago after all these years of bidens growing around with them trying to get into what would have been a terrible nuclear treaty anyway they announced they have no interest in any further negotiation well for the world's number one power to be brushed off by a third or fourth rate power that never would have happened under Trump or and other sensible pres similarly look at what's been happening China floated a spy balloon over the whole country later they've been developing a huge intelligence operation in Cuba and God knows what else they're putting in there and then recently they had one of their vessels in a Russian nuclear submarine dock in Havana 90 m off our Coast well what did we do what was our response nothing lately Russia and China had a joint bombing exercise a drill off Alaska what did we do nothing meanwhile China and Russia consistently support Iran and the huies and hisbah and all that in the mid East the houthis have totally disrupted the Red Sea and it's disrupting shipping what are we doing a very very limited defense I think instead we need to go back to Teddy Roosevelt's philosophy which was speak softly and carry a big stick these fellas speak loudly and they don't have any stick at all so that's my scary analysis of what's going on geopolitically but I think if we can fix the educational system make Americans feel patriotic again um make Americans be better educated restore the hard work concept restore the entrepreneurship concept then we we can combat all that but if we stay as a willing victim geopolitical things are going to get worse they're not going to get better and I think a key turning point in the Trump Administration was when we had the first state visit came from president G at Laura largu in Palm Beach a lot of components to the story which are in my book risks and returns but I'll just summarize one segment that afternoon noon we had a National Security Council meeting and we voted at that meeting to launch the 52 missiles into Syria in reprisal for their effort to blow up one of our bases in the mid East but we but Trump decided not to postpone the implementation he decided to do it at 7:15 that night in the men the ceremon dinner with presid J why did he do that first of all I think for and look what I will do it was obviously also a message to Iran or anyone else who wants to do us harm push me too far and you're going to get a response you don't like and if you notice during the Trump years we didn't have these incursions from China Iran made a little trouble but not so much Russia didn't invade Ukraine and to well into the Biden presidency that's not an accident I think they got the message from what Trump did that night at mararo and from other things that he did privately and publicly I think they got the message you can't go too far with this guy that's a message we have to get back to because if we let them keep becoming more and more bold and if we be becoming weaker and weaker and less patriotic that's not a good formula that's a formula that will lead to a war and a war that we may have a tough time in um when I have one last one last question just about about China and then Should the US Partner More With China? I want to I want to just understand where people can go to get your book and connect with you as well but the last the last thought that I had because I've had the conversation about China with several people and I don't look at China in the same lens as Iran China China seems to be not interested in anything like military compared to Iran which seems like to be Iran seems to be very hostile exception ly hostile but I've had a conversation uh with uh Keith crack about um Iran as well as uh Dimitri alich about Ira about China excuse me and there's there's just different views on how to manage and engage with China so in terms of your perspective trade and agreements and and how we sort of interact with China would it be better for the US to entrench further into China and try and put more businesses in China and do more trade and make them to some degree dependent is that even possible or is it better to completely remove and isolate and and not engage with them at a commercial level if that's even viable no I I don't think either extreme is the right answer uh I I think what we need is a more finely tuned policy uh and what I mean by that is the following uh it's inevitable that we will need to trade with China China is the second largest power in the world it's a very large and until recently growing market so I think the idea of total disengagement simply doesn't work the world is a more complicated place than that and further If We Were Somehow to totally disengage from China all that it would do is to divert their exports to other countries and they in turn would have to export more to us so would just scramble things up I don't think that's a practical solution the problem with putting more businesses into China is that the businesses they're mostly interested in are the high-tech businesses and most of the output of Hightech is what we call dual use semiconductors have peaceful use but they also are very critical to military applications so you can't build a semicond your plant that doesn't really turn out both kinds so and in China you don't really have been dependent with even if it's American own there're subject to all kinds of constraints all sorts of requirements that we don't have here um so I don't think putting more investment into China is the answer I think we need to figure out a serious adult level way to coexist with them and I think part of it has to be the realization that they will become more of a power there're already a meaningful power we can't just dismiss them and say it will go away won't go away they are an ambitious country and under President G are a very tight controlled country uh you perhaps aren't aware but of their billion three or 400 million population only 65 million are members of the Communist party so a tiny percentage of the entire population is even communist so that's an interesting dimension for people to think about but what it basically means is the bulk of the population is totally disenfranchised that leads to making it easy for dictatorship and while the technical form of government it may be communism the reality is China's a dictatorship Russia's a dictatorship and certainly Iran is a dictatorship and that's the real problem is the ideological problem uh I don't know of a single communist country that hasn't turned out to be a dictatorship and if you have a gigantic and powerful country that's a dictatorship all you have to run into is one successor dictator who really wants to take over the world and I'm not saying that g is necessarily that person but he's getting older he won't be the dictator forever someone else will be and it could very well be some right-wing General so I think we do need an accommodation but it needs to be an accommodation on equal footing it can't be that we let them win in trade because of violating rules taking advantage of intellectual property things like that we need a rule based trading system and one that's fair and one that has a mechanism for resolving honest disputes that's the way to solve the trade problem ultimately but we need to get the other parties to agree to it now on the book which is which is my balance of Trades issue yes so this is risk and returns creating success in business and life and that's what's out now that's correct and it's available on Amazon on right now and uh the formal publication date is September 10 so it'll be readily available in bookstores all over uh by then it's an anecdotal autobiography that takes the anecdotes many of which are in me using and interesting and tries to draw loose lessons from them lessons that could of their career and their life they may happen to be so I'm running all around the countryside doing book signing parties and as I we have a website for the book uh it's called risks and returns.net and I would urge anybody who enjoys this discussion enough to want to learn more about the book look on that website and you'll find a lot of information so you'll see you you'll the book will encapsulate basically your life anecdotes we'll talk about politics we'll talk about business all of that I mean you've done over 400 Bill you've restructured more than $400 billion in assets and you've been named Bloomberg's 50 most influential people so this is going to be a very interesting book so we'll link that in the show notes as well and if you're in by the way Wilbur if you're in Miami let let me know we'll uh we'll have to create some content around a book signing sometime if you're ever down here well I will be doing some stops in Miami so i' I'd love to take you up on that on that offer and that'll also force feed you a book so so so two birds one stone that works perfect um okay so we'll get all those links in the show notes so people can go uh they can pre-order the book now by the way on Amazon if they want to pre-order it or you can get it probably any any bookstores on September 10th um Wilbur I really appreciate your time I really appreciate you just sort of covering a wide range of different topics because I just sort of threw everything at you because you've had a very interesting life so I wanted to get a little bit of I want to get like a sample of all the different things that you you've taken on um if you were going Wilbur Ross' Final Lesson to leave the audience you can pick you can pick an Insight or a lesson something that you would tell your younger self your 20-year-old self after your career in private and public service what would that what would that one lesson be the my one big lesson is the only person who can hold you back is you yourself and if you yourself instead really work hard seize opportunities and take an occasional risk you can be come pretty much whatever you want to so there's no reason to hide in a safe room get out there in the open get into the real world rough things up a bit and if you get roughed up some along the way that's good because that's a learning experience but bottom line the only one who can hold you back is you yourself oh [Music]