Good morning. We are meeting today to consider the nomination of mr. Wilbur ross to be the next secretary of commerce. If confirmed mr. Ross would bring decades of business and entrepreneurial experience to this position best known for revitalizes distressed businesses such as those in the United StatesSteel Industry. At a time most inventors aban n abandoned the industry, investors abandoned the industry he organized the International Steel group in 2002 through acquisitions of the largest Steel Company in north america, later it merged to form the largest Steel Company in the world. Mr. Ross strong record of achievement led Bloomberg Business week to name him as one of the 50 most influential people in Global Finance in 2011. Its also why he is the only person elected to both the Turnaround Management hall of f. A. M. E. And private equity hall of fame. Mr. Rosss business is complemented by a service 0 the communi community. Mr. Ross served as First Lieutenant of the u. S. Army and currently a member of the deans Advisory Board of Harvard Business school and on the board of the school of management which awarded him the legend of leadership award. Mr. Ross nomination comes at an important time in our nations economic recovery. I believe his extensive management in the private sector and his understanding of challenges faced by workers and businesses alike will equip him well for leading the department of commerce. This Large Department with 12 different bure rose and nearly 27,000 employees in 50 states and all around the world overseas a diverse array of issues from treasure manage document weather forecasting to the census bureau. Ill be asking mr. Ross about changes facing the department and our economy. First and foremost how he plans to deal with trade matters as the secretary of commerce. I also want to explore how, if confirmed, he would continue to play a lead role in American Innovation like freeing up government spectrum for private use and pursuing the growing internet of things and his experience should help him anticipate growing programs like first net charged with creating a facingwide Broadband Network of First Responders and acquisition of weather satellites by the National Oceanic atmospheric administration. And finally one of the hallmarks of his work is Ongoing Development of cybersecurity best practices and standards this committee has strongly endorsed. Mr. Ross, should you be confirmed well be dependent on you for this collaboration and strengthen it as necessary. I believe you know how will make you an excellent next secretary of commerce and look forward to your nomination. I want to turn to our Ranking Member, distinguished senator nelson for any remarks hed like to make. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Mr. Wilbur ross and hillary ross, we welcome you both to the committee. I want to congratulate you on your nomination. You and interestingly, the incumbent, secretary bripritzgef some of the most substantial holdings of any nominees before this committee. After reviewing your Financial Disclosure and ethics agreement, its my understanding you have agreed to divest the vast majority of your personal holdings and resign from nearly 50 boards and organizations. I believe thats the right thing to do and it tells me that you are committed to doing the job the right way by placing the publics interests ahead of your own. Its my hope that President Trump will follow your lead and set the example that you set, to eliminate any business dealings that could pose potential conflicts of interest. In recent years, the commerce secretary post has not been one of the most sought or one of the most appreciated positions in washington. But i have a feeling that thats about to change in a big way. As the president elect has indicated, he is going to look to you to help lead the administrations trade agenda. Thats a departure from past commerce secretaries and the role that they played, which was much smaller in setting u. S. Trade policy. Given that expanded role and the incoming president s desire to make job creation and overhauling trade deals top priorities, i hope that well hear from you today as the chairman has already indicated on the administrations trade plans and how you all will hope to create jobs that will benefit all americans. Id like for you to tell us more about how your trade duties might expand and how this could impact the role of the u. S. Trade represent, who traditionally has taken the lead on the trade negotiations. And while were on the topic of protecting American Workers, theres been some negative commentary on how you built your Business Empire by buying and selling troubled companies. Others have lauded you for saving companies and thousands of jobs. I think it would be most helpful to all of us on the committee if we could get an assessment from you on your record of job creation and what the lessons that youve learned that will help grow and protect American Workers. Now, while i expect a good portion of today will be spent talking about trade and jobs and your experience, theres a lot more to the department of commerce. This department, of some 40,000 employees, impacts our daily lives by a number of things. Providing vital weather foreca t forecasts to millions of americans through noaa and the National Weather service, pl playing a huge role in building out our nations digital infrastructure. Helping grow and expand minority owned businesses. Collecting all sorts of data, including data critical to jobs and the economy as well as monitoring environmental conditions and climate change. That brings me to one of my last top topics, and one more that is especially important to mr. Ross, your state of florida. That is Sea Level Rise and global warming. Florida has over 20 Million People and 75 of them live on the coast, including the two of you. The states highest point is only 345 feet. That, by the way, a piece of trivia in the peninsula state is a position in the middle of the state whereba bach tower at lak wales is located. Because of the work of noaa and nasa, and other agencies, we have measurements and forecasts that can tell us when a monster storm is coming. And we also have the science to know that coastal communities face peril even on sunny days because of the longterm atmospheric trends. Scienti scientist scientistingly accurate data shows it is in fact happening. The problem is some folks will go to any lengths to deny this truth including gagging climate scienti scientists. Now, that shouldnt happen and that should be troubling to us. So given your personal experience of being a floridian, i hope that you will agree on the need to continue vital Scientific Research to inform the public about extreme weather events and trends over time. Its my hope that we will get a commitment from you to not allow in ttimidation and censorship o climate scientists under your jurisdiction. With that, mr. Chairman, i see my colleague, my fellow floridian, senator rubio, he has come back to the committee, and i am i know youre going to introduce him. Im looking forward to having him formally introduce our nominee. Thank you, senator nelson. We are very privileged to have senator rubio here, your colleague from florida and our colleague of the United States senate to introduce mr. Ross, so i welcome back to the committee, senator rubio. Please proceed with your remarks. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I must say the members, you guys look different from this side of the diyas. Anyway, thank you. I appreciate the honor of being here. Im honored to introduce wilbur ross a fellow floridian and he is president elect trumps nominee for secretary of commerce. I also want to thank you and senator nelson for allowing me this honor especially, as you said, i enjoyed serving on this committee for the past six years. To say mr. Ross has extensive business experience working in the private sector i believe is quite an understatement. For more than half a century now there is virtually no part of the American Economy in which he has not created jobs. This includes industries such as airplanes, apparel, auto parts, beer, banking, cards, electric utilities, food service, mortga mortgages, oil and gas. Rail manufacturing and shipping and textiles and trucking. In all mr. Ross has been chairman or lead director of more than 100 companies opera operating in more than 100 different countries. He would bring this real world experience to a departments who mission is fundamentally about expanding opportunities for american entrepreneurs and workers all over the world. Despite his professional commitments in the private sector, mr. Ross has also devoted time to Public Service answering the call from leaders in both parties. Overall, mr. Ross will bring an important perspective to major policy debates we need have includes modernizing tax codes and strengthening our economy and empowering Small Businesses and increasing wages for hard working family and insuring a fair competitive Playing Field when it comes to selling American Products and services to the rest of the world. I am confident mr. Ross will serve this nation admirably and i am proud to introduce him to the committee today. I thank you, mr. Chairman and thank the Ranking Member. Thank you, senator rubio. Mr. Ross, please come forward and take the witness stand. Well look forward to hearing directly from you. Were surrounded by floridians today, senator nelson. I know there are many of senator cobuch cobuchars and my constituents become parttime constituents of yours in florida. Eventually they become full time. Mr. Chairman, were looking forward to hosting you in florida as you so graciously hosted me in south dakota, so, too, were going to show you the amazing river of grass, the evergla everglades. Thank you. And thank you for doing it in february. Mr. Ross, please proceed. Welcome. Welcome, mr. Chairman, ra Ranking Member nelson and members of the committee. Im very grateful for the opportunity to appear before you today. As a proud resident of florida, i would also like to thank senator marco rubio for his kind introduction. With me today is my wife, hillary gary ross. Since president elect trump announced my nomination, ive had the opportunity to meet with many of you. In our meetings, ive heard firsthand how we can Work Together to the benefit of the american people. These meetings have been helpful to me and i look forward to continuing the dialogue. May be the only nominee ever for commerce secretary who actually worked as a census taker. When i was working my way through Harvard Business school, i was a census taker, what they more technically call an enumer rate tore in the scully scare area of Boston Square area of boston. That task was quite fascinating in that they had me wear a big white belt diagonally from the shoulder to the waist and a big white one around the waist and a big kind of School Patrol badge. Then, we had to talk our way into peoples households to get them to let us take the cens censuses. I have first hand expertise in that and can appreciate the enormity of the task for the 2020 census. I have also been a Large Consumer of various forms of data put out by different departments of the department of commerce. Census data, bea data, data from noaa, all kinds of information have come out. I believe its the case the Commerce Department emits 40 of all the data to the public that comes out of all of the departments come bined. So thats a huge task, getting it right, getting it timely is a big challenge and one we will work a lot on. Another very very important function of course is spectrum. We need more spectrum in the private sector. I will try my best to help convince those Government Agencies that have spectrum and dont really need to it permit it to be commercialized. That may well be a help to extending broadband to more Rural Communities and other segments that are underserved right now. I have some first hand experience there in that i have been vice chair of a community in southern florida in the process of undergrounding its utilities to bring fiberoptic service and 21st Century Service throughout the community. Also to protect us better against the weather that senator nelson and rubio pointed out is a big threat in southern florida. Weather sensitivity is something that comes to you naturally if youre in florida. Hi hilary and i live right on the water there so were well aware of the important of timely warning of impending hurricanes. Im also aware until noaa has been lunching its new series of satellite, there had been an inferiority of our weather forecasting relative to what was done in europe and in japan. As far as i can tell, the new Sensing Devices will more than bring us up to equal and probably ahead of the others. Southern florida also is characterized by very great importance of fishing and tourism. If theres one consistent message i got as i met with the various members of the committee, its just how important fishing is. I didnt really understand quite how intricate an industry it is. I think i now have some fundamental grasp of it and its importance. One of the things id like to try to help correct is we believe it or not, have a trade deficit in fishing of some 11 billion a year. Given the enormity of our coastlines and enormity of fresh water, i would like to try to figure out how we can become much more selfsufficient in fishing and perhaps even a net exporter of fishing. As to trade, over the years ive had businesses that operated in some 23 countries. For the most part our businesses have been domestic, but we have been on the ground in all of the Major Trading partners in this country. As a result, we know directly both whats good and a lot of things not so good about the trade policies of many of these other countries. I am not antitrade, i am pro trade but im pro sensible trade, not pro trade that is to the disadvantage of the American Worker and the American Manufacturing community. I think we should provide access to our market to those countries who play fair, play by the rules and give everybody a fair chance to compete. Those who do not should not get away with it, they should be punished and severely. I think that we cannot afford trade that is inherently bad for American Workers and for american businesses, but i think there are plenty of opportunities to expand our exports. I think the number one objective will be expanding our exports. I think there are many things we can do that we havent been doing and i look forward to discussing some of those as we get into more detailed questions. Very recently, the president elect has convened meetings with various of the hightech executives. Ive been impressed to learn from them how similar the problems they face with the protectionism and a variety of other countries through the problems that Manufacturing Businesses faced. So while the exact implementation of the improper things is not the same, the general direction is the same, trying to thwart american progress. Thats something we need to try to fix. There are many many more function that the Commerce Department has, but in the limited time of my introductory remarks, i think ill stop there and hopefully deal with the others during the question and answer period. I thank you dpn for having me here today. Thank you, mr. Ross. Before we begin our questions i want to ask unanimous consent to put multiple letters of support for mr. Ross into the record including those of four former secretaries of commerce endors endorsing him for this position. Without objection so ordered. We will now turn to the quest n questions. According to media accounts should you be confirmed as secretary of commerce, president elect trump will tap you to oversee the nations trade policy. Id like to ask you specifically what you will be seeking to accomplish with regard to trade policy in the first 100 days of the Trump Administration. If you could hone in a little bit because a lot of the media reporting specifically china and also some stories this morning regarding canada and nafta, if you could speak to those issues. Surely, sir. We are well aware of the legislative powers of the u. S. Trade representative and neither the president or i will try to do anything that is adverse to the congressional mandate given to the u. S. Trade route. Having said that, we think it is good for trade policy to bring all of the intellectual resources we can muster to [ interruption ]. That was not part of my prepared remarks. Thank you. Please proceed. I was saying, i think its important to bring all the intellectual resources and experience that we can to he helping solve the trade issues, therefore i view that there will be a collaborative process among the u. S. Trade with