Wilbur Ross, President-elect Trump’s pick for Commerce Secretary, doesn’t merely espouse government planning of the economy, he lobbies for it and profits from it.
“One of the problems in our country,” Ross said in 2010, “is we don’t have an industrial policy.” By “industrial policy,” Ross meant federal laws that steer resources to certain sectors for certain activities.
Ross, in a CNBC interview in the summer of 2010, expressed his admiration for China’s five-year plans, the ones originated by Communist revolutionary Mao Zedong. “Is that something we should do here, Wilbur?” journalist Andy Serwer asked.
“Yes,” Ross responded, before lamenting our lack of an “industrial policy.”
Ross explained how he would use government to steer the economic ship: “We ought, as a country, to decide which industries are we going to really promote — the so-called industries of the future.”
This may sound like the sort of picking-winners-and-losers that defined Obamanomics. But in fact, went further, chastising Obama as too laissez-faire.
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