Swampy attorneys will flourish and productive companies without good political connections will be harmed.
As I wrote in my cover story for the magazine in defense of free trade, lobbying isn’t an unfortunate side effect of protectionism. It’s an integral part. And sure enough, the new “golden age” of protectionism that the Trump administration wants to inaugurate has spawned new lobbyists to take advantage of it.
“In the first quarter of 2025, 162 new lobbying registrations were filed that listed trade or tariffs among their concerns,” Tim Carney writes at the Washington Examiner. “That’s more than twice as much as last year and a 48% increase over former President Joe Biden’s first year.”
One lobbying firm in particular looks set to make a killing: Ballard Partners. Carney writes:
Ballard Partners is the most Trump-connected lobbying firm in Washington, D.C. It is run by top Trump fundraiser Brian Ballard, and its recent alumni include White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and Attorney General Pam Bondi. Ballard is registered to lobby for Daimler, as is Hunter Morgen, a top trade adviser from Trump’s first term.
Petitioning the government for a redress of grievances is a constitutional right, but the government doesn’t have to listen. Whether it listens or not, the lobbyists will get paid well. Protectionism is a full-employment program for Washington trade attorneys, which is probably part of the reason why a Washington trade attorney, Robert Lighthizer, is one of America’s staunchest protectionists.
Abigail Hall wrote earlier today for Capital Matters about how tariffs encourage waste. They create entrepreneurship opportunities, not for pleasing customers but for evading the government.
Lobbying is one of the ways businesses waste money under protectionism. The firm with a competitive advantage is no longer the firm that makes the best products and markets them most effectively. It’s the firm that’s best connected to government.
For the low, low price of a few million dollars spent on top-flight Washington lobbyists, large businesses can expect to reap tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in benefits from getting government rulings to go their way. This profit opportunity exists only because the government created the protectionist rules in the first place.
Businesses are behaving rationally by hiring trade lobbyists, and lobbyists are exercising their constitutional right to petition the government. It’s the government’s fault for creating the incentives in which swampy attorneys will flourish and productive companies without good political connections will be harmed.