President-elect Donald Trump, no laissez-faire Republican, likes to use the government to steer the ship of the economy, punishing what he sees as bad behavior and rewarding behavior he likes.
Trump’s fondness for economic intervention and rejection of any consistent policy framework may be annoying for CEOs, but it’s gold for the lobbyists who are close to him.
For example, consider the lobbying firm from which Trump has plucked his chief of staff and his attorney general: Ballard Partners. This Washington, D.C.- and Florida-based firm boasts a client list including foreign governments, a Mexican billionaire, retail giant Amazon, Chinese social media titan TikTok, and marijuana dealers.
Pam Bondi served as attorney general of Florida for eight years before cashing out to become a lobbyist at Ballard Partners. Her second term ended on Jan. 8, 2019, and two weeks later, Brian Ballard, the founder and president of the firm, announced that he had hired Bondi to launch a national “Corporate Regulatory Compliance” practice.
At Ballard, Bondi lobbied on behalf of General Motors, Amazon.com on electric cars, Major League Baseball, Uber, and many other clients. When Trump nominated Bondi last month for attorney general, she still was still an active and registered lobbyist for law enforcement clients. Bondi, in 2016, was a vocal supporter of Trump.
Susie Wiles, Trump’s chief of staff, earned her riches as a lobbyist at Ballard. Her clients include GM; the Motion Pictures Association of America, the lobby for Hollywood studios; and Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions, a nonprofit organization that lobbies for green energy subsidies. She was last registered to lobby in early 2022, at which point she moved to run Trump’s 2024 campaign.
Ballard, who is still a registered lobbyist, is also a top Trump donor and fundraiser. Ballard helped to bring in “more than $50 million for committees supporting” Trump’s 2024 campaign, the New York Times’s Ken Vogel reported. Ballard also donated $250,000 to the Trump 47 Committee. In the 2016 and 2020 elections, Ballard also gave six-figure checks to elect Trump.
With Trump insiders on payroll and all this cash flowing from Ballard, it’s unsurprising that the firm has Trump’s ear. In a few cases, it seems Trump was swayed by Ballard’s lobbying.
Trump, in his first term, took aim at TikTok and pushed toward a ban on the Chinese-owned app. He declared TikTok use a “national emergency,” stating in an executive order that the company’s “data collection threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information — potentially allowing China to track the locations of Federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage.”
Four years later, the day the House Energy & Commerce Committee passed a bill effectively banning TikTok from app stores, Trump rose in defense of the app. “If you get rid of TikTok, Facebook and Zuckerschmuck will double their business,” Trump posted on his personal social network, Truth Social. “I don’t want Facebook, who cheated in the last Election, to do better. They are a true Enemy of the People!”
Amid Trump’s back-and-forth on this topic, TikTok hired Ballard to lobby in August 2024. The next month, Trump posted a video in which he said, “For all of those that want to save TikTok in America, vote for Trump. … The other side’s closing it up.”
Likewise, Trump has taken a strong pro-marijuana position, and Ballard runs an entire cannabis practice with multiple industry clients.
Notably, Ballard now represents Nippon Steel, the Japanese firm that wants to buy U.S. Steel. Trump, in contrast to his flip-flop on TikTok, still says he will oppose the purchase.
The lesson, then, is this: Hiring Ballard may or may not get you the results you want from Trump, but when Trump threatens government action against a company, that means business for Ballard, which, in turn, raises money for Trump.
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Trump’s fondness for government intervention and his inconsistency make him the perfect president for lobbyists. Hey, you never know what this guy is going to do, you’d better hire us!
This is something many critics miss about K Street and the lobbying industry: It is not merely the lever industry uses to move government, it is also the tool political insiders use to extract money from industry.