The Decibel - The trade war has created a boom for lobbyists

Episode Date: September 11, 2026

Personal connections have always mattered when it comes to political lobbying, but as the trade war ramps up, and global interests try to influence U.S. policy as set by U.S. President Donald Trump, industry sources told The Globe that those connections at the executive level matter now more than ever.Today, Irene Galea is on the show. She’s a business reporter for The Globe, and she was in Washington, D.C. in the lead up to Canada’s countertariffs coming into effect. She’s here to talk about how the dynamics of lobbying have changed and what that tells us about power and influence in the trade war.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

So I was in Washington, D.C. last week, and staying pretty near the White House. I kept walking up and down the block just north of the White House. And I was seeing this doorway. Irene Galea, it's a business reporter for the globe. On the outside, it isn't particularly noticeable. It has a beautiful art deco mosaic above it. But it started to catch my eye because every time that I walked by, there was a big line of big black SUVs outside and other very fancy cars.

And I kept seeing very sharp-looking people walking in. I kept wondering, what is that? And as I was in D.C., I was talking to people who work in government, who work in jobs adjacent to politics. And I was asking them, if you want to be where the influence is, We're the people who have power and have the ear of those who can make policy. Where are you going? Where are you going after work for a drink?

And from every person, I got one answer, Ned's Club. Among the people who frequent this space are lobbyists. Lobbyists have always played a role in trying to influence government policy. But since the start of the trade war, lobbying and the money spent on it is booming. What I learned in D.C. is that increasingly, in order to influence power, you need to know the right people. And this has always been the case in the U.S., in Canada, in government, and business. Connections always matter. But now, knowing of much smaller group of individuals who are much closer to the president holds considerably more sway.

And so what this club signified for me is that there's an exclusive. around access that disproportionately benefits a small group of people. So today, Irene is here to talk about what she learned while she was in D.C., about how the dynamics of lobbying have changed, the people involved, and what this all tells us about power and influence in the trade war. I'm Cheryl Sutherland, and this is The Deciple from The Globe and Mail. Hi, Irene. Thanks so much for coming on the show. Thanks for having me.

So Irene, you were in Washington last week amidst this trade war ramp up. And you spent a lot of time speaking to lobbyists. Yes. Why? Well, I had applied for access to the White House and unfortunately didn't hear back in the week that I was there. And I figured, look, if I can't get direct access to the outputs of policy, so what's coming out of President Trump's mouth in person, I really want to understand what's going into those decisions. what the inputs are who is talking to him and his close circle and ultimately who's influencing the outcome of policies

that ripple down to businesses not just in the U.S. but in Canada and around the world and beyond that to consumers. And the stakes are so incredibly high. Tariffs and trade can really mean the difference between a business thriving and potentially facing bankruptcy. And so the access to power really interests me the way that the policies are formed behind the scenes. I wanted to understand that world a bit more. Yeah.

And so this is what lobbying is all about, right? But can you just very quickly explain what exactly lobbying is? Yeah. So technically speaking, a lobbyist is a professional communicator who tries to influence government policy on behalf of a. person or a company or an organization. So lobbyists will work with clients to understand their perspective, their interests, and then they'll meet with politicians and government officials, their staff, to understand that client's position with the aim of ultimately shaping legislation at some point.

Yeah. So for example, like if it's someone from the soda-making company, they want to influence basically better rates or whatever it be. Precisely, yeah. They might say, well, our soda-making company depends on aluminum cans. And so how can we shape policy in that our costs for aluminum cans don't go up? That's the sort of thing they might be trying to sway government in. And there's two kinds of lobbyists.

There are in-house lobbyists and four hire lobbyists. So in-house, they would be one who, for instance, works for that soda company. and they know very intimately the business, and they're representing only the soda company, but then there are also four higher lobbyists who work at something more akin to a law firm. In fact, a lot of lobbying companies, lobbying firms are also law firms, and they'll have a range of clients, and they'll represent them across multiple different government bodies. So what makes a good lobbyist then? Yeah, I really wanted to understand that as well.

So when I was in D.C., I met with a bunch of lobbyists to understand what their day-to-day looks like. And one of them was Hunter Morgan, a trade lobbyist at a really big firm called Ballard Partners. And what he told me is that lobbying, especially when it comes to trade, is an art, not a science. So you have to know not just what government department to go to, but also what level of government to go to, who to go to, when to go to. to them because the administrators on the other side, they have a hundred different priorities. A good lobbyist understands what their client's main goal is. They can translate the complexities of their business to a congressperson or a senator perhaps who isn't specialized in the intricacies of that business, but then also understands how to communicate the message in a way that.

fits into the government's goals, or at least that, whether it's a senator or a person who's writing policy, who helps them understand why it might benefit them to set the law in that way. Given that this job sets out to basically influence policy, do lobbyists have to disclose what they're doing? Yes, yeah, absolutely. That's the case in the U.S., as well as Canada and lots of other countries. there are pretty strict disclosure requirements. So in the U.S., a person is required to submit a filing to the government about who they were lobbying on what topics and how much they were paid for that if they spend 20% of their time or more on lobbying activities. In Canada, as of this last January, it's a little bit different if your lobbying activities exceed eight hours in any consistent. for a week period, you have to disclose it. And this gives us a window into who is talking to who and who's attempting to influence power. So for this article, I relied on this source called

Open Secrets. It's a U.S. nonprofit organization that essentially takes all of these filings and puts them online in a way that's very accessible and user-friendly. And it lets us see this Open Secrets. It let's us see some of the bigger trends that were really valuable for this reporting. Yeah, let's get into what you learned here because there is a shift that we're seeing because of the trade war, right? So what did lobbying look like before the trade war? So what lobbyists told me is that in the past, lobbyists would have lots of different people who they would go to. They would spread their efforts around Congress through the different government agencies who are actually implementing regulations as well as to the executive branch, the White House. And that's still the case. But I've

heard from everyone that increasingly there's one of those branches that's getting much more attention. And unsurprisingly, it's the White House. Interesting. Okay. And what about on money being spent on lobbying? Like, do we have a sense of how much is being spent now and how that compares to before? So what we've seen this year is record spending on lobbying the U.S. federal government. So last year, companies spent $5.1 billion U.S. dollars doing this. That was disclosed by Open Secrets. The earliest year that Open Secrets has data for is 1998, when companies spent $1.4 billion. Ten years ago, you're looking at $3.1 billion. And in the previous years, it's been around $4 billion.

So it's extra billion dollars spent last year. And now we're halfway through 2026. These disclosures go up until the end of June, first two quarters of the year. Already companies have spent $2.7 billion on lobbying. So if that spending keeps up for the rest of the year at the same pace, we could see another record year of spending. And what this shows is that there's so much more uncertainty because of the changing policies.

around tariffs, around trade, and so many other areas of government decisions. And companies really feel like they have to influence policy in order to put their sector or their business in a better position. Because the stakes are really high for them. We'll be right back. So, Irene, when you were in Washington, you actually went to some of these lobbying firms, right? Tell us what they're like. Yeah, I love being in these places to understand the atmosphere. I don't know, it's always important to me when I'm writing a story to get a sense of the physical world that these people inhabit.

So they're all clustered around the White House and another street, which is called K Street. K Street is where all the big law firms and lobbying firms are. And they are in these awe-inspiring buildings. I mean, they have atriums that are 10 stories tall and they have American flags hanging down, which are 50 meters tall. They have these marble statues surrounded by marble floors, marble walls. They have fountains coming down, dripping water right through the middle of the building.

Okay, so that gives us a sense. It paints us a picture of like how elaborate these buildings are and fancy. And let's talk about these firms then. How much are they making? Yeah, these companies are breaking their own records. And we know all of this because they have to disclose it. Ballard Partners, which I mentioned before.

Last year they made $88 million up from $20 million the year before. Oh, my goodness. Wow. So it's a really big jump. And now halfway through this year, they've already reported $60 million. And this is U.S. U.S., this is all U.S. Some of the other big ones, B.D.

GR partners made $71 million last year, and that was up from $41 million the year before. Another big jump. Miller strategies reported $50 million, up from $12 million. They've had a big increase. And some of the big heavy hitters, some of the biggest firms really established ones that have always made a lot of money, they also beat their own earnings by millions of dollars. So this has really created a big opportunity for lobby firms to, take on more clients.

Right. Okay. So these lobbying firms are doing well. And I want to talk about Ballard partners here because they are breaking records and they're making the most money here. So what did you learn about how they became the successful? Yeah. One thing I learned about Ballard is that they've really benefited from longstanding ties between

the president and the firm's founder, Brian Ballard. So he was a major Republican fundraiser. And their connection dates to the time before the president took office. And they have a lot of other connections. So Mr. Morgan himself served as special assistant to the president during his first term, among a series of other senior government roles. And so one thing I was told in D.C. is that they have really tangible ties to the people inside the White House who have the president's ear. And this is really attractive to clients.

And I'll say also, it's a bipartisan firm. So they also have plenty of people on the Democratic side who've worked within the administration, former politicians. And what this means is that if there's a change in administration. Yeah, say like a Democratic president gets elected the next time. Or even say if the midterms, which are coming up in November, change the back. balance of power in Congress, all of the clients that they have can stay with them because they have connections to both parties. Right.

It would make sense for a lobbying firm to be able to speak to everyone, right? Yeah, exactly. Not just one party. And look, it's not just Ballard partners that has gained a lot of attention because of this. Another example is a firm called Checkmate Government Relations. They've really built a reputation around lobbying on tariff issues, and their managing partner, Chess McDowell, has described having a close friendship with one of the president's sons, Donald Trump Jr.

So right now it's really important in D.C. to show that you have these connections because it won't come as a surprise to anyone. Over the last two years, perhaps even more so than during the president's first term, we've seen the power increasingly concentrated in the executive branch because he's been making some of these major decisions, like on tariffs, largely through executive orders. Irene, do we have a sense of success rates of these lobbying firms? So ultimately, it's hard to know what the factors are that goes into a firm's earnings. I'll say one thing I learned when I was in D.C. is that just because a company spends money on lobby,

it doesn't guarantee them success. Lobbying is not a magic wand. It's not like you give a lobbying firm millions of dollars. They whisper in the ear of the administration and suddenly, boom, you have your policy. I spoke with Mark Fagan, a lecturer in public policy at Harvard University. He told me that even the best-resourced companies

will only see success through lobbying about 50% of the time. And that's because often for these really big issues, there are companies on the other side that have the opposite view who are lobbying as well. So there are some companies in the U.S., for instance, who want to see these tariffs disappear because they import goods from Canada. They don't have alternatives domestically. And so it'll mean higher costs for them in their business. But on the other side, there are American firms who see it as a good thing because if other companies are discouraged from buying Canadian products, they may turn to American products and the producers of those products will benefit. And both of these parties,

both of these sides are hiring lobbyists. They're both spending millions of dollars to have that perspective transmitted to the people in power. So just because you spend money doesn't actually guarantee success. When we talk about lobbying around the trade war, of course, Canada and Canadian companies are heavily affected by that, right? So what do we know about how much lobbying in the U.S. is representing Canadian interests right now? Yeah, Canadian firms, Canadian organizations are absolutely among those spending money.

So, for instance, the Canadian Steel Producers Association, the Business Council of Canada, are two big railways, CN, Canadian National Railway, And CP, Canadian Pacific, Kansas City, LTT. And there's Hydro-Ca-Cabec, there's Canadian solar, Apotex, Magna International, Nutrient. These are... Big list. Yeah, big list. Big companies that do a lot of trade with the U.S.

that stand to be really heavily affected by tariffs. And just that group that I just mentioned collectively spent $3.6 million U.S. just in the last six months. and that is only a small group of companies lobbying specifically on trade issues. This does not represent the whole of what Canadian companies are spending to do this. And that's just trade. That's not even Canadian companies or governments lobbying on issues like tourism, for instance, or other related issues. So the true amount is far higher than $3.6 million.

So ultimately then, what story do you think this lobbying boom tells us about how to understand power and decision making in this administration when it comes to the trade war and more broadly? What I took away from all of this is that we're seeing a change in the economics of influence. if people with greater access to the White House can directly translate that access into economic advantage for themselves and for their clients, that raises questions around equity and whose voices are not being heard and who gets the benefits of that access. So this gives large companies with money to spend on lobbyists and advantage in securing, let's say, a terrorist. of exemption and other favorable treatment. And so it means the trade war isn't just about establishing winners and losers in the economy based on research alone and what maybe historically was a more multi-step lobbying process with many more parties involved.

What I was told by the people I spoke to in D.C. is that now it's really about establishing power through proximity. And it means that for companies dealing with this administration, it's not just enough to negotiate with the U.S. government. You have to navigate the president's personal, close network inside the White House and in the cabinet. If we zoom out even further, though, for me, this really becomes about who holds power, and influence in a democracy. And what happens when you see that power

concentrated within an executive branch? It's not like Congress and other parts of government have formally lost power. But what we see is that those institutions have become less important in the eyes of those who are seeking to influence policy. Irene, thank you so much for coming on the show. this has been really interesting. Thanks for having me. That was Irene Gallia, a business reporter

for the globe. That's it for today. I'm Cheryl Sutherland. This episode was mixed by Rachel Levy McLaughlin. Our producers are Madeline White, Rachel Levy McLaughlin and Mikhail Stein. Our editor is David Crosby. Adrian Chung is our senior producer and Angela Pichenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening.