President-elect Donald Trump plans to pick investor Wilbur Ross, who became a billionaire by acquiring and restructuring troubled companies, for Commerce Department secretary, said two people familiar with the transition. An announcement may come Wednesday, according to the people, who asked for anonymity. Ross would oversee a sprawling agency of almost 47,000 that describes itself as “the voice of U.S. business within the President’s Cabinet.” Under the Commerce umbrella are entities as diverse as the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office; the Bureau of Economic Analysis, which provides official macroeconomic statistics about the U.S. economy; and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which among other things tracks hurricanes and has a key role in monitoring the effects of climate change. Ross, 79, a longtime Democrat, backed Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney in 2012. He emerged as an advocate for Trump’s trade and economic agenda when the real-estate developer was still seen as a long shot against Democrat Hillary Clinton, and denounced Romney for criticizing Trump. As commerce secretary, Ross would be charged with executing some of Trump’s most ambitious plans. The president-elect campaigned on promises to scrap the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, slap tariffs on U.S. companies that move abroad and then try to sell goods back into the country, take a tough approach to China including naming it a currency manipulator, revive the U.S. steel industry, and spent big on infrastructure. His appeal to blue-collar white workers in the Rust Belt helped sweep him to victory. “Trump’s pro-growth agenda will get this economy growing,” Ross wrote in a joint opinion piece in October for RealClearPolicy with CKE Restaurants Inc. chief executive officer Andy Puzder and economist Peter Navarro. “It is a solemn promise based on a solid set of interactive and highly synergistic policies designed to free the American economy from the chains that have been wrapped around it during the Obama-Clinton years.” ‘Radical’ Approach Ross, in an interview with CNBC in June, called for “a more radical, new approach to the government” to help middle-class and lower middle-class Americans who have “not really benefited by the last 10 to 15 years of economic activity and they’re sick and tired of it.” Ross’ seminal deal, starting in 2002, cobbled once-iconic steel-making companies into International Steel Group Inc., what was then the nation’s second-largest integrated steelmaker. He and his backers in 2004 announced the sale of the Ohio-based firm for about $4.5 billion to Indian-born, U.K.-based steel billionaire Lakshmi Mittal, reaping more than an eightfold profit, about $2.9 billion. Ross also put together deals in the coal mining, automotive parts, and textile industries, among others. If the Republican-controlled Senate confirms Ross after Trump is inaugurated in January, the investor would succeed another billionaire, Obama appointee Penny Pritzker. The Chicago hotelier was one of the wealthiest Cabinet secretaries in history, disclosing assets in the range of $400 million to $2.2 billion, not counting more than $50 million in Hyatt Hotels stock. She is now worth about $3 billion, according to a Bloomberg Billionaires Index estimate. Ross’ net worth matches Pritzker’s at some $2.9 billion. Ross’s previous dealings with Trump include representing bondholders in the bankruptcy of his Taj Mahal Casino Resort, which at the time was Atlantic City, New Jersey’s biggest and flashiest gambling house, helping them to recover their debts. The deal gave creditors a 50 percent stake, but also allowed Trump to remain as chairman, according to Associated Press accounts at the time. It came more than 12 hours after Trump missed a $47.3-million interest payment on $675 million worth of high-yield bonds used to finance the gambling house. Bondholders had threatened to seize control of the Taj Mahal in what could have been a protracted fight, according to the news service. “We could have foreclosed, and he would have been gone,” Ross told the New York Post. New Jersey Native Ross, a New Jersey native earned a bachelor’s degree from Yale and an MBA from Harvard Business School before working on Wall Street as a bankruptcy specialist at Rothschild Inc. He opened his own firm, WL Ross & Co., in 2000, where he serves as chairman and chief strategy officer. Ross bet billions by combining companies in U.S. industries such as steel, coal, auto part and textiles that were threatened by overseas competition and onerous labor contracts. Ross strove to keep on labor’s good side even as his taste in investments made them natural enemies. “Leaders of some of the big industrial unions, the steel workers, the auto workers—they understand the dynamics of the industry at least as well as the senior management of the companies,” Ross said in a 2010 interview with Charlie Rose. Leo Gerard, who led the United Steelworkers when Ross bought LTV, lauded the investor for revitalizing the company, although officials at other unions judged him less kindly. The choice of Ross confounds campaign rhetoric in which Trump condemned the elite institutions that populate Wall Street. Steven Mnuchin, who spent 17 years at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and later ran a hedge fund, was picked by Trump as the next U.S. Treasury secretary, a person familiar with the decision said on Tuesday. Trump last week picked Betsy DeVos, a charter schools activist who has given millions to conservative causes, as his secretary of education. She is the daughter-in-law of of billionaire Richard DeVos Sr., who co-founded Alticor, the parent company of direct-seller Amway. Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, has assailed Trump about what she called a slew of “special interests, Wall Street elites and insiders” joining the White House transition team.