Wilbur Ross, President-elect Donald Trump's commerce secretary nominee, has had a hand in sending an estimated 2,700 jobs overseas since 2004, Reuters reported Tuesday, citing previously unreported Labor Department data. When the billionaire was working as an investor, buying struggling companies and pulling them back from the brink of failure, some of the textile, auto-parts, and finance businesses he controlled resorted to shipping production abroad.
In the grand scheme of things, those 2,700 jobs "amount to a small fraction of the U.S. economy, which sees employment fluctuate by the tens of thousands of jobs each month," Reuters reported. Ross' supporters also pointed out he's saved thousands of jobs. Still, the numbers show a different side to Ross' story. "He is not the man to be protecting American workers when he's shipping this stuff overseas himself," Don Coy, who used to work at a company Ross created before the automotive parts manufacturer closed its factory in Ohio and moved production to Mexico, told Reuters.
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