Companies Strategize Over a Trump-Focused Approach to Lobbying

Add corporate lobbying to the list of ways Washington works differently under President Donald Trump.

In a moment when the federal government’s actions are particularly centralized with presidential decisions—and more responsive to Trump’s whims—and the public is highly polarized, companies are pivoting their approaches to wielding influence.

Some are bypassing traditional congressional connections to seek an audience with Trump and his inner circle. Some industries out of favor with the administration are looking for areas of agreement to build on. And everyone is being more careful with their public statements.

“Clients understand that policymaking really happens in public these days,” said Campbell Spencer, chair of public affairs at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck. “The line between advocacy and public perception is almost collapsed, in that policy outcomes are often shaped by public perception,” she added.

And while reputation has increasingly driven regulatory and legislative outcomes in recent years, that’s accelerated under this administration, she said.

Here are some of the strategies companies are deploying to curry favor.

Treading Carefully

Facing the risk of blowback from angering Trump, companies are reframing lobbying asks so they don’t come off as criticism of key policies like tariffs—especially publicly.

“The communications occur,” said Whitney Baird, president and CEO of the US Council for International Business. “I just think it’s much less public.”

Companies always managed their public reputations carefully. But now, to a much greater degree than before, “in addition to public backlash, there’s a very significant risk of government backlash,” said Jane Sumner, associate professor of political science at the University of Minnesota.

“That is relatively new in the United States,” she added, “the idea that governments can be capricious.”

While the public can turn on any company for a perceived misstep, its impact is largely limited to buying power, and its memory tends to be short.

But the government’s ability to impact a company’s business goes much farther, Sumner said: “What’s really different about the government is that the government has extensive monitoring, they have a long attention span.”

And the government has many tools as its disposal. The Trump administration has used federal contracts and licenses, for example, to exert pressure.

Audience of One

With Congress largely taking a backseat—especially on trade, one of Trump’s signature policies—and much of the executive branch’s decision-making centralized with the president himself, companies are often tailoring their lobbying message to Trump.

That’s meant companies are hiring well-connected lobbyists like Brian Ballard, whose clients also include law firms targeted by the administration.

“It feels like a more transactional approach rather than a traditional approach,” Frank Guinta, senior vice president of ML Strategies and a former congressman, said at the Association of Corporate Counsel annual meeting in Philadelphia.

Baird said member companies are taking note of this administration’s “very top-down approach, that is very different from many administrations.”

For example, companies are seeking meetings between their CEOs and a cabinet secretary or the president himself, or one of his close advisers, she said.

Finding Common Ground

The clean energy industry is on the outs with the Trump administration

Jason Duva, general counsel at Factorial Energy, which makes electrical vehicle batteries, said he’s adapting by approaching the federal government on issues they’ll be interested in.

“From our perspective, it’s really about finding the common ground,” Duva said. For example, he’s talking to the government about drones—which fit the administration’s interest in national security, and also run on batteries.

Companies are also looking for ways to build industry coalitions wherever they can. When fintech firm Robinhood Markets Inc. was facing an SEC rule widely believed to target that company, now-GC Lucas Moskowitz reached out to other financial services firms to explain how the rule would also affect them—enlisting their help in lobbying against it.

Planning for Political Changes

At Harbinger Motors, which builds fleets of electric vehicles for largely municipal customers, some of the most important policy conversations are with lawmakers who aren’t currently in power.

“We’re likely to have a different Congress in a year and a half,” said Chris Brown, the company’s head of government affairs. “Regardless of which party is in leadership, we need to start educating policymakers now. As they shape the next major piece of legislation on climate and electrification, they’ll need clear, informed guidance.”

“When you’re too busy reacting, you lose the ability to shape long-term outcomes, and in a hostile environment those pressures end up shaping the business,” Brown added. “It should be the other way around.”

For Duva at Factorial, “although we have to execute within a particular government and administration, almost by definition we have to think beyond that, and we really have to plan well ahead of time for those range of outcomes,” because projects run on longer time horizons.

Trying to plan ahead, however, is challenging when companies are bombarded with policy and regulatory updates—often forcing them into a reactive position that takes away planning resources.

“Just by necessity, there is probably less forward-looking” lobbying right now, said USCIB’s Baird.