President Donald Trump promised his tariffs would revitalize American industry. He apparently meant the lobbying industry.

Had Trump’s goal been to stimulate lobbying on tariffs and trade, he could not have executed a better trade policy. As you would expect, the lobbyists who are getting the most new business are close allies of Trump and his donors.

Recommended Stories

• Trump is singlehandedly destroying global conservatism
• Machiavelli in America
• Hegseth turns to his mission to reshape the military

Building a wall of tariffs around the country has worked like building berms around a wetland: It’s caused the swamp to fill up.

During his campaign, Trump promised all sorts of tariffs on U.S. importers. His tariff rhetoric has been pretty constant through his first hundred days, even as his tariff policy has been the opposite of constant — tariffs on Canada and Mexico, tariffs off Canada and Mexico; tariffs on everybody, tariffs paused on everybody; tariffs on just China, but maybe not.

The inconstancy is not a bug in the rollout. It’s central to Trump’s tariff policy. For Trump, author of Art of the Deal, the main goal of trade policy is maximizing his own leverage. To maximize leverage one cannot stand on principal or be too firm. One must be flexible. Everything has to be negotiable.

This ever-changing nature helps make the tariffs even more of a lobbying magnet. The tariffs could be on or off. They could be 10% or 145%. They could specially exempt just the product you import into the United States, or just the product your overseas affiliate sells into the U.S.

After his “Liberation Day tariffs,” Trump released a list of a thousand materials that would be exempt from the tariffs. One product on that list is polyethylene terephthalate, used in plastic soda bottles.

ProPublica noted that Coca-Cola bottler Reyes Holdings is a major user of polyethylene terephthalate. After last year’s elections, Reyes Holdings retained Ballard Partners as its trade lobbyist. The lobbying firm was founded by Brian Ballard, a Trump donor and ally. Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, and Attorney General Pam Bondi worked there.

Reyes Holdings is paying Ballard Partners $40,000 a month, according to federal filings, to lobby just on “issues regarding trade and tariffs.” In other words, Trump’s trade policy is bringing business to Trump-connected lobbying firms.

The Senate Office of Public Records keeps track of lobbying filings required by the Lobbying Disclosure Act. In the first quarter of 2025, SOPR received 238 new lobbying registrations that specified they would lobby on trade or tariffs. That’s the highest quarter on record, three times the average of the first quarters of the previous 10 years, and more than double the second-highest first quarter on record (Biden’s first year in office).

In addition to registrations, lobbying firms and companies must file quarterly reports that include what subjects they lobbied on in the past three months. Companies and firms filed 1,695 quarterly reports for Q1 this year that included either trade or tariffs, up from 1,416 last year.

Squire Patton Boggs, a legendary law-and-lobbying firm, added 11 clients for trade and tariffs. Foreign companies that sell into the U.S. are typical clients, including Hyundai and Heineken.

A lobbyist who appears on many of these registrations is Everett Eissenstat. In Trump’s first term, Eissenstat served as deputy director of the National Economic Council and was a point man on economic diplomacy before he left in 2018 to become a lobbyist.

Michael Best Strategies added six new clients for trade and tariffs, including the Clean Economy Coalition, an industry lobbying organization to make a pro-business case for climate-change-focused subsidies, regulations, and taxes. Among Michael Best Strategies’s trade and tariff lobbyists is Alexander Angleson, a special assistant to the president in Trump’s first term after serving on Trump’s transition team and working on his first election at the Republican National Committee.

QATAR’S QUIET CAMPAIGN: HOW DOHA IS BUYING AMERICA

The biggest winner was the aforementioned Trump-connected Ballard Partners, which registered 16 new clients that included trade or tariffs among their lobbying matters. These clients include BMW, Daimler, Dole, and GE Precision Healthcare.

Some critics doubt BMW, Daimler, GE, Heineken, Hyundai, or the makers of polyethylene terephthalate will hire more American workers because of these tariffs, but just look to K Street, and you will see Trump is already creating a new Golden Age.