Wilbur Ross | 08-01-24

with us today is uh Wilbur Ross the Secretary of Commerce for four years under President Donald Trump and uh Wilbur there's so many things going on in the world what do you want to talk about this morning well we could probably spend the whole day talking about relevant topics but I think the key problem I see right now is not so much inflation not so much the economy but what's going on internationally I've never seen as much difficulty among countries as we see today this morning the Russians as you know released the two journalists but the war in Ukraine just seems to be chugging on and on and on and on uh North Korea is rattling swords again mid East is a dels there doesn't seem to be peace anywhere and I think that that is something that we really have to get over with quickly because if we don't it's practically going to be world war three with us in combat on several different fronts and wello you were Secretary of Commerce and uh right now the Suz Canal is closed the Red Sea is closed and it's costing maybe the price of oil to be up $115 a barrel above what it should be uh and the commanderin-chief is not doing anything about it and Iran hired the hoodies to close it yeah well Iran I think did a, 800,000 barrels a day last year of exports because he was wasn't even enforcing the constraints due to the fact that they've been sanctioned so what's weird is they're able to sell their oil both to China and to India they're two big customers so is Russia even though technically they've been sanctioned but meanwhile the American companies are under pressure to produce less rather than more the it's crazy it's as though they thought that foreign oil is somehow less pollutive than us oil and in reality the reverse is true us oil tends to be light oil and their oil tends to be heavy and it's actually more pollutive than ours so it's all but I think what's good about it is a lot of those things could be straightened out very very quickly if the willpower were there I understood uh and uh it seems like there's no leadership in in in in the world and and right now over the you know President Biden still has six months to go uh who is running the ship well clearly it must be the staff people I mean you saw in a number of the press conferences uh President Biden would occasionally say oh my staff won't let me talk about that or my staff doesn't like me saying this or that so clearly the staff has been uniquely in control of a lot of activities uh even before he announced that he's not going to rerun but I think the strangest thing about that if he's not well enough to run how can he be well enough to stay in there as president absolutely um Wilbur you are one of the world's greatest entrepreneurs you've done so many deals uh you're well respected around the world in so many Industries you wrote a new book and the book is risk and rewards and no risk and returns yeah risk tell us about uh uh what what why you wrote the book and and uh are you giving us any good secrets on how to do deals yeah the book is first of all an autobiography so it covers my life from a very complicated childhood through uh business and through working in Washington and even up to today and the purpose of the book is I faced a lot of challenges throughout that period and it's an effort to try to help other people understand how they can overcome the challenges that they face even though they're not the exact same challenges that I face I think there's too much of the tendency of people to give up not to take risk just sort of pedal along not get anywhere and point of the book is you need to take some career risk some occupational risk some investment risk sensible ones if you really want to get ahead and it you can't be you just hide in a safe room and say well I'm almost through with my day's work what really really provoked me in large part to do the book it came across a Reddit site that has 6 million subscribers to it and it's dedicated to anti- work so then you get these pathetic things on it people saying things like I just can't force myself to work anymore well the notion that work is an aberration work is abnorm normal and doing nothing is the state of normaly is a total contradiction to the American dream and even worse to Common Sense so this is an effort to try to shock people out of that to show that a lot of things can be achieved if you're determined enough work at it hard enough and reconcile your fact to the fact that occasionally something will go wrong and you'll either have to correct it or go around it or outlive it so that's what the book is about and it uses anecdotes with Business Leaders world leaders and just plain people to try to illustrate those points and so you're believer like I am you can't work from home you got to you you got to be within the action and what do you think of these Wall Street kids the new generation that only want to work 3 days a week or 4 days a week yeah it it it it blows my mind it really does when I was a kid first working on Wall Street my idea was if I got to the office a little earlier than the other people and if I stayed a little later maybe I could get ahead a little faster but that kind of thinking doesn't seem to Prevail anymore and it's tragic because you you can't sort of meter out work and say well I'm only good for three days a week work it makes no sense people should put their real effort into it and if they really hate their work they should do something else but what they should not do is do just do nothing I agree 100% those people that want to work three days a week from home they're the new failures in the world and they will fail and Wilber Ross one of the great entrepreneurs of the world the new book risk and returns I look forward to hosting a uh a book party for you in New York when does the book hit uh uh Amazon and Barnes & Noble well it's on Amazon right now the official publication date is September 10th so it'll be in all the stores by September 10th well I look forward Amazon right now I look forward and uh we'll talk to you again real soon Wilbur and uh God bless you and God bless America thank you John same to you