While running for president in 2016, Donald Trump took aim at Amazon.
“If I become president,” Trump said,” Oh, do they have problems. They’re going to have such problems.”
Trump argued that Amazon was dodging taxes and had “anti-trust” problems. But founder Jeff Bezos used the Washington Post to win favor among politicians and avoid scrutiny.
How did Amazon executives react when Trump won the White House? They hired Brian Ballard, Trump’s old lawyer, major donor, and Florida finance director, who was presently raising money for the president’s inauguration, to be Amazon’s lobbyist. Amazon contributed more than $50,000 to that inauguration.
This is how Washington, D.C., works under Trump. Its mercurial and axe-grinding president threatens a private company, specifically or vaguely, and the company responds by hiring his friends as lobbyists.
The racket lacks subtlety under Trump, but it’s not new. Democrats, including former President Barack Obama and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), have long practiced this sort of shakedown politics expertly.
In fact, it’s inevitable, given the district’s size and power. The government’s power to regulate and tax, that is, its power to destroy, gives Trump leverage, and he is not a man to let leverage go unused.
For a few recent examples, consider the boomlet for the two lobbying firms that employ the daughters of Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles (who was recently a Ballard lobbyist). Caroline Wiles is the vice president of federal affairs at Rubin, Turnbull & Associates, and Katie Wiles is a director at Continental Strategies.
Trump and his health and human services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., have attacked the drug industry in various ways. The Department of Government Efficiency threatened to cut biomedical research, and Trump threatened to force drug companies to cut prices and to impose new tariffs on them. It’s no surprise, then, that PhRMA, the lobby for the drug industry, hired Rubin, Turnbull & Associates right after it named Caroline Wiles to head the federal lobbying shop.
In June, the Trump administration imposed the harshest possible sanctions on Mexican bank CIBanco, accusing it of aiding the fentanyl industry. A few weeks later, CIBanco, which had never had a Washington, D.C., lobbyist, hired Rubin, Turnbull & Associates.
Continental’s latest clients include Federcitrus, the industry lobby for Brazil’s citrus industry. This summer, Trump announced 50% tariffs on all Brazilian goods, which reportedly wreaked “havoc in Brazil’s citrus belt.” Specifically, Brazil exports almost half of its orange juice to the United States, and this market would disappear under Trump’s tariffs.
Such examples have piled up in the second Trump administration.
In the spring, Trump announced he would ban Nvidia from selling any of its artificial intelligence microchips to China. Around the same time, the chipmaker launched an in-house lobbying shop for the first time. One of the registered lobbyists was Stewart Barber, who served in Trump’s White House for four years.
The Amazon-Ballard example from 2016 was the tip of the iceberg for Ballard. This spring, in the first full quarter of the Trump administration, Ballard Partners set the record for the most lobbying revenue by a firm in any quarter in history (even when adjusted for inflation).
Other Ballard clients include other targets of Trump attacks: JPMorgan Chase, which Trump accused of discriminating against him for political reasons; Axel Springer, the parent company of left-leaning Politico that has a massive revenue from Uncle Sam, which Trump has attacked; and PBS, which Trump is trying to defund.
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Trump, again, is extraordinary in many ways. In some ways, though, he is just functioning as those who wield federal power always function: using government power to extract value from private companies. Sometimes, this means hiring friends and family. Sometimes, it means cutting campaign checks. Sometimes, it means helping the incumbents politically.
The key ingredients are Trump’s ruthless quid pro quo approach and Uncle Sam’s terrifying power.