Top 73 Quotes & Sayings by Wilbur Ross

If you think about it: a big bank in any country, what is it? Really, as an investment, it's a warrant on economy.

Mexico has 44 treaties with other countries that make it very advantageous to do international shipping from Mexico rather than from the United States. Believe it or not, Mexico has better treaties with the rest of the world than the United States does.

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

Ships are a strange kind of commodity because they're very lumpy, very big individual units, but they're commodities.

Banking, I would argue, is the most heavily regulated industry in the world. Regulations don't solve things. Supervision solves things.

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?

Between the Community Redevelopment Act, requiring banks to make what I would call very weak loans, and specific quotas that the Congress imposed on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, that created the market demand that really led to the subprime phenomenon.

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.

The way we'll get more jobs is by creating new industries, new companies, businesses that are higher tech and therefore can compete.

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.

The one term I don't like to be called is a 'vulture.' Because to me, a vulture is a kind of asset-stripper that eats dead flesh off the bones of a dead creature. Our bird should be the phoenix, the bird that reinvents itself, recreates itself from its ashes. And that's much closer to what it is that we really do.

I am not anti-trade. I am pro-trade. But I am pro-sensible trade.

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.

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.

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.

To me, the most terrifying form of warfare would be if there was some simultaneous cyber attack on our grid, on the banking system, and on our transportation system. That would be quite a devastating thing, and yet in theory, absent some real protective measures, that could happen.

The reality is if something were to happen that cost China jobs - like, if they upwardly revalued the currency a lot - those jobs aren't going to come back to the U.S. They would go to Vietnam; they would go to Thailand. They would go to whatever country was the lowest cost.

There's trade, there's sensible trade, and there's dumb trade.

You cannot just keep borrowing more and more and keep spending more and more without eventually having a day of reckoning.

We think, over the long term, the real key to value of a bank is does it have true deposits from true long-term customers? People who actually know the bank, live in the neighborhood, work there, maybe have a mortgage there, credit card... That, to us, is the key to a bank.

The rules of origin in NAFTA need some tightening. Rules of origin are what let material outside of NAFTA to come in and benefit from all the taxes and tariff reductions within NAFTA.

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 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.

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.

Each weekend I play at least one and maybe two sets of tennis a day. My doubles team was in the finals recently at my tennis club in Palm Beach and lost a tiebreaker after a three-hour match. I must confess, by the end of the three hours, I was relieved it was over.

There isn't a bank in the world that could withstand a run. They all borrow short and lend long, regardless of what they say.

The typical big Japanese company has somewhere between a third and 40 percent of its revenues coming from developing countries, and about a third of Japan's exports are also to the emerging countries, so in a strange way, Japan, which has very little internal growth, its big companies are a good way to play the emerging markets.

I think at the end of the day, the real sick man of Europe is liable to turn out to be France, not Greece, not Portugal, not Spain, not Italy. The reason is France is very uncompetitive to begin with on a global scale, and the measures that Hollande has been putting in have been very, very negative from the point of view of economic growth.

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

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.

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'm a very big proponent of cloud. We've used it a lot in private sector, and as far as we can tell, it is not only more efficient, it's probably also more secure for lots of very complicated technical reasons. I think it's a very important thing for government to do, and also to have systems that talk to each other.

If you add up all the promises any politician makes, the math doesn't work. Hillary Clinton's math doesn't work; Donald's math probably doesn't work. I think you have to listen to their campaign pitches more as symbolic, more as metaphors.

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.

Believe it or not, Mexico has better treaties with the rest of the world than the Unites States does.

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

Absent some international interruption, there's no real justification for oil being more than $90 or $100 a barrel.

If you add up all the promises any politicians makes, the math doesn't work.

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

NAFTA is an ancient treaty.

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

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

I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with a bank being big. In fact, there are some good arguments about universality of geography that in theory, if you have all your eggs in one little community, and some big employer goes out, that could be your downfall.

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.

Generally speaking, companies get into bankruptcy as a kind of meritocracy. Somebody made some sort of big mistake, to get into bankruptcy, and very often, a part of the mistake is too much leverage.

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.

Barring some national security concern, I see no valid reason to keep peer-reviewed research from the public. To be clear, by 'peer review,' I mean scientific review and not a political filter.

My obligation is to disclose companies in which I'm an officer, a director, or an investor.

Shale gas, if left to flourish, could create several hundred thousand more jobs.

A company not under sanction is just like any other company, period.

China is the most protectionist country of the very large countries. They talk more about free trade than they actually practice.

Washington, D.C., is the new Wall Street. No significant financial transaction of any consequence occurs without it.

Part of the reason why I'm supporting Trump is that I think we need a more radical, new approach to government - at least in the U.S. - from what we've had before.

Enforcement is a very important part of the administration strategy. We think that even our friendly nations should live by the rules, and if they don't, we will intend to enforce things against them.

It's important to have a sound idea, but the really important thing is the implementation.

Shipping has a great oversupply of vessels that came from over-ordering a few years back. We think 2014 may be when it turns around.

The E.U., China, and Japan all talk free trade, and they all practice protectionism.

If you want to do something to destroy consumer spending, just eat away at the middle class because the other problem we have is the structural problem of middle class America.

I believe in the two-party system.