In the 1990s, Ross was an adviser to New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani on privatization, and was appointed by U.S. president Bill Clinton to the board of The U.S. Russia Investment Fund.

[2][3] His father, Wilbur Louis Ross, was a lawyer who later became a judge, and his mother, Agnes (née O'Neill), of Irish descent, was valedictorian at Sacred Heart Academy in Hoboken and taught third grade in North Bergen for 40 years.

[11] He then worked for Faulkner, Dawkins & Sullivan, an institutional securities research company, where he rose to become president of its investment banking operation.

[2][12] By 1998, Ross was involved in eight of the 25 biggest bankruptcies to date, including Drexel Burnham Lambert, Texaco, Public Service of New Hampshire (now Eversource Energy), and Eastern Air Lines.

[33] The mine had 12 roof collapses in 2005, and U.S. Department of Labor data showed 208 citations for safety violations in that same period, including 21 times for build-up of toxic gases.

[65][66] During the 2018–19 federal government shutdown, Ross was criticized as being out of touch with average American citizens after expressing bewilderment about why furloughed, unpaid workers and contractors would choose to visit food banks rather than apply for a personal loan.

[67][68] In February 2019, Ross's financial disclosure was rejected by the Office of Government Ethics after he reported that he had sold bank stock when in fact he held on to them.

[73] On July 13, 2018, after he received a letter from the government's top ethics watchdog warning of "potential for a serious criminal violation", Ross announced that he will sell all his remaining stock.

[74] In October 2018, documents showed that Ross had participated in a meeting with executives from Chevron Corporation where they discussed oil and gas developments, tax reform and trade issues.

[75] In October 2020, it was reported that Ross had continued to serve on the board of a Chinese joint venture until January 2019 (which was nearly two years into his tenure as Secretary of Commerce); at the same time, the United States and China were engaged in a trade war.

[77] In June 2018, it was revealed that Ross shorted stock after he knew of an upcoming report with information that would adversely affect the company but before the story was published.

In December 2017, he approved sending, in the form of a letter (which was originally drafted by Thomas Hofeller, a noted anti-immigrant political figure) that was later copied by James Uthmeier into a memo, a request to the Department of Justice to add a question to the Census for the first time since the 1940s asking about the U.S. citizenship status of the members of the responding household.

"[80] New York solicitor general Barbara Underwood led a lawsuit filed by 18 states and many cities to attempt to stop the Trump administration from adding a citizenship question on the 2020 Census.

U.S. federal judge Jesse M. Furman ruled against the Department of Justice and Wilbur Ross, stating that if the trial is delayed the appeals process may not be done by summer 2019, the printing deadline of the census.

[85] Specifically, Ross had testified under oath that the addition of the question was prompted by DOJ when in fact he had made the request via the Hofeller letter he had transmitted.

[86] Ross and the Trump administration refused to comply with a congressional subpoena, issued by the House Oversight Committee, for documents regarding efforts to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census.

[84][85] On June 27, 2019, the Supreme Court, in Department of Commerce v. New York, left the citizenship question blocked from the 2020 census, in part because of the government's explanation for why it was added.

Ross allegedly left his department leaderless due to the large amounts of time spent in the White House trying to win support from President Trump.

[95] The Commerce Department denied that Ross had threatened to fire "any NOAA staff over forecasting and public statements about Hurricane Dorian.

[102] In a January 30, 2020, interview with Maria Bartiromo of Fox Business, when asked if the COVID-19 outbreak in China would threaten the U.S. economy, Ross said, "I think it will help to accelerate the return of jobs to North America ...

I don't want to talk about a victory lap over a very unfortunate, very malignant disease ... the fact is, it does give business yet another thing to consider when they go through their review of their supply chain.

[107] Community advocates and former Census Bureau employees expressed concern that this shortened timeframe would result in poor-quality data and a significant undercount that would disproportionately affect traditionally hard-to-count groups such as ethnic minorities, young adults, and people living in rural areas.

She also blocked a plan to deliver the count results to the White House by December 31, rather than the original April 2021 delivery date when Trump might be out of office.

Koh subsequently called the October 5 end date "a violation" of her court order and prepared to begin contempt proceedings against Ross and the Commerce Department.

[114] In 1999, Ross was awarded the Order of Industrial Service Merit medal by South Korean president Kim Dae Jung for his assistance during the 1997 Asian financial crisis.

[123] He served as International Counsel Member of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, and President of the American Friends of the René Magritte Museum in Brussels.

In January 1998, he funded $2.25 million in seed money into the campaign of his then-wife, Betsy McCaughey, who was seeking the Democratic nomination for Governor of New York.

He helped push to privatize the city's public broadcasting stations and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and worked to sell off empty land lots to businesses.

[132] In December 2016, while his Manhattan penthouse apartment at The Briarcliffe was on the market for $21 million,[133] Ross purchased a 10,000 square foot house in the Massachusetts Heights neighborhood of Washington, D.C., from Adrienne Arsht for $10,750,000.

[136] Ross owns an art collection valued at $150 million that includes pieces ranging from Western surrealists to contemporary Eastern sculptures.