Lobbying Trump's Tariffs

Tariff-related lobbying surged in the first quarter of 2025

By Leonardo Pini, OpenSecrets, July 1, 2025

Throughout the 2024 campaign, Donald Trump touted the financial windfall to be reaped if the United States were to impose a series of revenue-raising tariffs. Since returning to office, the president has followed through on that promise — but has rescinded or reduced some tariffs and faced multiple court challenges threatening to derail his economic agenda.

As companies, investors and trading partners grapple to keep up with the constantly shifting tariff landscape, one industry has seen a big boost to its bottom line: the lobbying sector, which experienced a surge in tariff-related work in the first quarter of 2025.

In the first three months of this year, lobbyists represented 215 clients on tariff issues, according to lobbying disclosure reports studied by OpenSecrets. In all of 2024, lobbyists handled tariff work for just 120 clients. And it’s not just the number of clients signed — lobbyists stepped up their work on those contracts, filing 1,707 reports on tariff work in the first quarter of 2025. That puts them on track to surpass last year’s total of 5,679. 

If they keep up that pace, they would surpass the number of reports filed in 2018 and come closer to the 2019 total, when Trump implemented tariffs in his first term. 

Most active lobbyists

• One of the industries that has had a difficult time navigating the strategy behind Trump’s trade war has been pharmaceuticals. In recent weeks, Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on medicines as part of a broader strategy to manufacture more drugs domestically. As a result, amongst the companies that have increased their lobbying spending the most from Q1 2024 to Q1 2025 we can find major organizations like the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacture of America, Ely Lilly and Apotex. PhRMA increased its spending from $9.8 million to almost $13 million. Ely Lilly boosted its spending from $1.9 million to $3.5 million. Apotex’s expenses surged from $140,000 to $810,000, as the company spent more in Q1 2025 than all of 2024.
• The three companies have lobbied on significantly different issues. Apotex has lobbied to exempt pharmaceutical products from becoming part of the broader trade war launched by the Trump administration. Eli Lilly has lobbied mostly on intellectual property, access to markets through trade negotiations and general issues related to tariffs and trade talks with Japan, the European Union, China, India, the United Kingdom and Brazil. Some of the issues PhRMA has been focusing on regard intellectual property as well tariffs policy related to the pharmaceutical sector and section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which gives the president powers to take actions against unfair trade practices. 
• One of the companies more active on lobbying on tariffs has been Hawaii Gas, which had not reported any lobbying activity in previous years. The company lobbied on issues related to the imports of propane from Canada. Propane and energy products are protected by the USMCA (U.S.-Mexico-Canada) trade agreement. It spent $40,000 in Q1 2025 on that and more general issues related to tariffs on Canada. 
• Nike Inc. and Adidas AG, amongst the biggest apparel companies in the world, are amongst the companies that offshore their production the most, especially in the Indo-Pacific region, set to be hit hard by Trump’s tariffs. Both companies have boosted their lobbying expenditures: Nike went from $410,000 in Q1 2024 to $630,000 in Q1 2025, while Adidas went from $10,000 to $27,000. According to the Budget Lab at Yale University, tariffs could spike clothing and textiles price lines by 17 percent. Nike lobbied mostly on policies that could result in adversary foreign tariffs and goods imported from China. Adidas filed only one report in 2025 regarding tariffs. 
• General Motors also reported a huge spike in lobbying expenditures in the first quarter, with trade being one of the top priorities. The automotive giant has surged its lobbying expenses from $4.8 million in Q1 2024 to $8.2 million in Q1 2025, a 69 percent increase. Amongst the most pressing issues for the company are non-tariff trade barriers, USCMA and the international auto supply chain. The company has also said that tariffs will cost it up to $5 billion. 
• Apple has been a target for Trump for some time, as he tries to compel the tech giant to bring its manufacturing to the United States, saying recently that he has “a little problem with Tim Cook.” Trade-related issues has been one of the main focuses for the company, filing three reports regarding trade in the first quarter of 2025. Reports touch on different issues such as U.S. competitiveness in global markets and reintroduction of the American Innovation and Choice Act and/or the Open App Markets Act. The company,  headquartered in Cupertino, California, has increased its lobbying efforts from $2.1 million in Q1 2024  to $2.5 million in Q1 2025. 
• Paper Excellence, a North-American pulp and paper company, has increased its lobbying expenses on tariffs by 237 percent between Q1 2024 and Q1 2025. The company went from $80,000 in the first quarter of last year to $270,000 in the first quarter of this year. It filed different reports on tariffs: one regarding the miscellaneous tariff bill, one regarding general discussions on the impact of tariffs and one regarding section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974. 
• Two aluminum companies — Century Aluminum and Aluminum Association — also reported a spike in lobbying on tariffs. The latter went from $80,000 in Q1 2024 to $230,000 in Q1 2025, lobbying mostly on aluminum trade and tariffs issues. Century Aluminum went from $119,000 to $229,000. It lobbied on section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, which gives the president powers to adjust imports of certain goods if there’s a concern for national security. Century Aluminum also lobbied to support the effort of the administration to increase tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum from China. In June 2025, Trump announced an increase of tariffs on those products from 25 percent to 50 percent. 

Why does it matter?

U.S. and international companies are trying to keep up with the administration’s shifting tariff policies, knowing any changes would impact supply chains, production lines, the cost of putting together a product or offering a service, and therefore the final cost consumers will pay. 

According to the Budget Lab at Yale University “the price level from all 2025 tariffs rises by 2.3% in the short-run, the equivalent of an average per household consumer loss of $3,800 in 2024$. Annual losses for households at the bottom of the income distribution are $1,700.”

And it’s not just big companies and their consumers that are going to pay the price of Trump’s decisions. Small businesses are also affected by the scale of these measures and the on-again, off-again policies.