Loyalty only goes one way

Investor Wilbur Ross was brought into the administration as one of President Donald Trump’s “killers” – but in recent months, the commerce secretary has been increasingly marginalized, with his agency widely seen in the White House as a mess.

Trump himself has lashed out at Ross in Oval Office meetings, telling the man who once helped bail him out in Atlantic City that he’s “past his prime” and “no longer a killer” and trying to bench him from making trade deals, according to three people familiar with the comments. Despite being one of the administration’s leading protectionist voices early on, Ross was initially left off a May trade delegation to China led by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

  Politico

Wilbur Ross was only given the job because of his past collusion with Trump. What's he done to piss off the mob boss?

Ross is heading back to China in early June in hope of cutting some type of trade deal that delivers on Trump’s campaign promises to extract concessions from Beijing on behalf of American workers.

[...]

“The fact that he is going over to China is a signal that the president has some confidence in him. He likes Ross even if he does not consider him a killer,” said one former administration official. “But it’s also a signal that they are not expecting a whole lot. You would not send him if you were expecting real progress.”

Not if he's going to sleep during meetings.

The president likes him because he sucks up. If he stops doing that, he'll be out on his ear.

Originally, Ross had hoped to play the alpha dog on trade policy. He tried to establish his dominance early on by launching a Commerce Department investigation into the effects of steel and aluminum imports on national security. He even maintained an office in the Eisenhower Executive Office building on the White House grounds, keeping him in close proximity to Trump.

But he has been outmaneuvered by U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, who was confirmed in May 2017 — the last of Trump’s Cabinet officials to pass through the Senate. Lighthizer quickly morphed into a power player and launched his own investigations into cybertheft and Chinese trade demands.

[...]

One senior administration official noted that Ross remains invaluable to Trump because of his deep familiarity to China given the many deals he conducted in the country as an investor. The two also run in many of the same social circles and still see one another at Mar-a-Lago where Ross remains a member.

[...]

The focus on trade – most recently, imposing tariffs and dealing with the Chinese electronics company ZTE — has put Ross in the middle of the biggest fights dividing Trump’s economic advisers.

[...]

Under Ross’ leadership, the Commerce Department has seen an exodus of five top Republican appointees, leaving the agency in the hands of three Ross loyalists who work on the building’s fifth floor and control most decisions emanating from the building.

These aides are focused on fulfilling Ross’ wishes on trade policy, sometimes to the detriment of the agency’s other wide-ranging responsibilities, which include 12 different bureaus and offices that cover everything from economic analysis to NOAA to minority business development, the U.S. census, and patents.

[...]

“Ross has been involved and then totally uninvolved on trade and the reason is because his whole mode is to tell the president whatever he wants to hear,” said one of the close advisers to the White House. “He is always trying to guess what the president will say. In the beginning, that was easier because the president was more predictable. But Ross did not get the message that Trump now wants to win the Nobel Peace Prize and doesn’t want to launch a trade war.”

Is this the most back-stabbing, chaotic administration in US history?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.