Quotes from Wilbur Ross

I think it's natural for any manager to want to grow his business. The question is at what rate, and in what direction, and in what format?

The fundamentals are the U.S. is going to end up being a net exporter of natural gas. That's going to be wonderful to help our balance of payments, reduce our dependence on a lot of countries that aren't so crazy about us, and change many, many parts of what goes on here.

I see myself as a private-equity investor that helps rebuild companies. Restructuring is a cottage industry in that there aren't that many serious practitioners.

I believe if we and the Mexicans make a very sensible trade agreement, the Mexican peso will recover quite a lot.

The fact that you're successful doesn't mean that you can't relate to working people.

There is no evidence that more regulation makes things better. The most highly regulated industry in America is commercial banking, and that didn't save those institutions from making terrible decisions.

My wife Hillary sometimes accuses me of trying to reinvent the 19th century. In some ways she's right because I like things that I can understand and that aren't too complicated.

One of the problems with industries that have been in relatively long-term declines is that, very often, the managements in those industries develop a kind of loser mentality. And when you ask them what's wrong with the business, they'll point to extraneous forces.

We'll be aggressive on trade because we know that deals that have been made historically have resulted in the great loss of manufacturing jobs, a great amount of closed manufacturing businesses. We don't want that to continue.

Confrontational things, admission of error, admission of defeat, restructuring, laying people off - those are not American ideals.

China is the world's biggest exporter, but they're also the people with one of the highest tariffs on imports in the whole world. That seems a little bit oxymoronic.

Regulations don't solve things. Supervision solves things. If we could figure out that the subprime thing was a train wreck that was coming, where were the regulators?

Hillary Clinton can't tell a good trade deal from bad one.

The problem with regional trade agreements is you get picked apart by the first country. Then you negotiate with the second country. You get picked apart. And you go with the third one. You get picked apart again.

I think there's a big difference between the impact of trade agreements on corporate America and the impact on Mr. and Mrs. America. 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.

The United States is the least protectionist country in the world but has the largest trade deficit, while other countries are highly protectionist and have huge trade surpluses. This cannot continue.

The E.U. is one of our largest trading partners, and any negotiations legally must be conducted at the E.U. level and not with individual nations.

I think what we have to do is figure out how to make sure we get the benefits of improved technology and yet cope with the dislocation that it will inevitably produce in certain industries.

I still like TIPS (Treasury inflation-protected securities), and I think a big opportunity is coming in the municipal bond market.

We are the world's biggest importer. We need to treat the other countries as good suppliers.

Mexico has 44 treaties with other countries that make it very advantageous to do international shipping from Mexico rather than from the United States.

NAFTA is an ancient treaty.

Everybody talks about tariffs as the first thing. Tariffs are the last thing. Tariffs are part of the negotiation. The real trick is going to be increase American exports. Get rid of some of the tariff and non-tariff barriers to American exports.

Many of the smaller banks have had to get to the point where they now have more compliance people than they have lending offices. That's crazy.