The U.S. Department of Commerce seldom grabs headlines or congressional scrutiny. It doesn’t become “weaponized” against political opponents of the incumbent party. After the 2016 election, an article on Vox about incoming power players of the Trump administration dismissed the department as a “hodgepodge of agencies,” and a “Cabinet backwater.”
Yet the mission of this “hodgepodge” of administrative agencies, bureaus, and offices could not be more important. The Commerce Department’s broad purpose is “to create the conditions for economic growth and opportunity.” The department has an important role in setting and executing U.S. domestic and international trade policy. It administers tariffs and even arms control through its regulatory oversight of military exports. These functions receive quite a bit more attention than the activities of such workaday agencies as the National Weather Service, the Bureau of the Census, and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
The Commerce Department is the fourth most lobbied federal office, behind only the Treasury Department, Health and Human Services, and the White House itself. It is more lobbied than the Department of Defense and Department of Transportation, despite managing a far smaller budget. This is no accident, because Commerce makes what can be life-and-death decisions for particular industries and businesses.
The trade war with China gave the Commerce Department tremendous influence over this critical policy area. The Trade Expansion Act of 1962 gave the Commerce Department authority to investigate the effect of imports on U.S. national security. Effectively, the department creates the groundwork for tariffs. Through its Bureau of Industry and Security, Commerce regulates what are known as “dual-use” technologies, which have potential military applications for foreign powers, another sore spot in the U.S.–China relationship.
As one aspect of its report, GAI investigated the personal financial benefits that accrued to the past several secretaries of commerce—how they benefited their own interests through department decisions. GAI also found that China has learned how to tap into the Commerce Department for its own benefit. They have been doing it for years, across several different administrations, among Democrats and Republicans alike.
Let’s start with the current secretary of commerce, Gina Raimondo. A previous governor of Rhode Island, Raimondo comes with a background in finance. She founded the venture capital firm Point Judith Capital in 2000. She is worth roughly $10 million, based on her financial disclosure and as reported by Forbes magazine. Raimondo’s husband, Andrew Moffit, spent 20 years at the consulting firm McKinsey & Co., leaving in 2020 to become “chief people officer” of a software company called PathAI. This company applies artificial intelligence and machine learning technology to the field of medical diagnostics.
In February, Moffit exercised his PathAI stock options and purchased at least $50,000 worth of its stock. He left his full-time job with the company and became instead its “strategic adviser,” thus deepening his financial ties to the firm while creating an appearance of greater distance between his role with the company and his wife’s duties as commerce secretary.
Artificial intelligence is the focus of the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security because it often has direct military applications, making it sensitive to U.S. national security. Possible restrictions include the sharing of AI technology with foreign employees, an area in which Moffit could well be responsible as “chief people officer.”
In addition, Raimondo’s department has loosened restrictions on Huawei, the Chinese telecom giant that Trump administration regulators had sanctioned because of the company’s ties to the Chinese government and particularly its military. Huawei’s founder, Ren Zhengfei, is a Party loyalist who urged his workers to “surge forward, killing as you go, to blaze us a trail of blood,” in their efforts to sell Huawei products to the West. Huawei has been identified as a security threat by the governments of Japan, Taiwan, France, the UK, the United States, Australia, and Germany, among others.
Then there was Wilbur Ross, secretary of commerce under President Trump. Ross was a successful businessman with huge commercial ties to China. He had shipping companies that had major Chinese investment. In fact, Trump criticized him for being too soft on China while he ran the department.
Ross kept investments in companies directly affected by tariff policy, even as the Commerce Department handed out tariff exemptions and negotiated new trade agreements. Wendy Teramoto, his chief of staff, simultaneously served on the boards of some of these companies, GAI’s report notes.
According to our own 2018 analysis, 62 percent of the cargo carried into the United States by one of Ross’s shipping firms was South Korean steel, for which Ross had helped to negotiate a tariff exemption.
Before joining Commerce, Ross founded and chaired an auto parts company with operations around the world, including Mexico and China. Ross helped renegotiate the U.S. trade deal with Mexico and Canada, which lowered import duties on the automotive industry and later refused to release the results of the department’s investigation into the effects of foreign imports on the domestic automotive industry.
Before Ross, President Barack Obama’s commerce secretary was Penny Pritzker, part of the prominent Illinois family that is heir to the Hyatt Hotel fortune. In the years immediately before she was tapped by her fellow Chicagoan Obama, Pritzker had focused on her own business ventures, launching PSP Capital Partners and Artemis Real Estate Partners, two investment firms.
While she was secretary of commerce, buildings owned by Pritzker’s companies were leased to Commerce Department agencies, such as the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and to Commerce Department contractors. In 2015, the Clean Energy Trust, a Chicago-based not-for-profit supporting clean energy start-ups through business development, received $10 million in funding through a grant program administered by the Department of Commerce. It was the only Chicago-area group to receive such funding. Its board of directors was co-chaired at the time by Penny Pritzker’s cousin, Nick Pritzker.
