In August 2009, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce attacked President Barack Obama’s budding health care overhaul, declaring in a scathing television advertisement the legislation would raise taxes, balloon the deficit, and socialize medicine. Motivating the business lobbying group’s aggressive opposition were concerns the eventual Affordable Care Act would stifle economic growth and threaten its members’ profitability.
Nearly 16 years later, the chamber is again at odds with a president and his prized agenda. But unlike the Obamacare hypothetical, Donald Trump’s unilateral implementation of tariffs on foreign imports is doing demonstrable damage to economic growth and business profitability. Yet rather than publicly target the president’s trade policies, the group is relying on respectful lobbying to obtain relief for its members.
This strategy is a product of Trump’s centrality to this process.
While senior administration officials are involved and in regular contact with the business community, winning tariff exemptions requires appealing to Trump, personally. Picking a public fight with the president or running ads highlighting the fallacy of his deep faith in the efficacy of tariffs would risk an angry backlash and be counterproductive to lobbying efforts, the chamber has concluded.
“I think we’ve been pretty critical in our disagreement with these tariffs and pretty clear and unambiguous about what we think the tariffs are going to do to the economy and to businesses and to consumers,” Neil Bradley, the chamber’s executive vice president, chief policy officer and head of strategic advocacy, told The Dispatch in a telephone interview. “The difficulty that I think everyone finds is how—particularly in this tariff process that is really unlike any other legislative or even regulatory process—how do you effectuate a change in course?”
The chamber has answered that question in part by sending a letter to the Trump administration that aligns the organization with the president’s trade philosophy while tactfully requesting relief from tariffs on behalf of small businesses. “The chamber supports many of the president’s policy goals,” the letter reads. “At the same time, we have heard from a historic number of small businesses who have made it clear: they need immediate relief.”
More evidence of the chamber’s deference: The group declined to challenge the Trump administration’s tariffs in court, although some businesses have taken legal action, arguing the president has misused the emergency trade authority Congress granted the executive branch decades ago. As CNBC reported, that decision stands in stark contrast to the “more than 20 times” the group sued President Joe Biden’s administration.
But the U.S. Chamber of Commerce isn’t alone.
Most major industry lobbying organizations in Washington, D.C., representing corporate America and businesses large and small, fear angering Trump with strident opposition to his trade agenda. So, while these groups are candid about the negative impact tariffs are having on the economy generally and businesses specifically, they have essentially put away the proverbial political stick wielded against previous presidents and have instead attempted to woo Trump with political carrots.
This conciliatory approach tends to focus on individual trade-related challenges, instead of on the president’s tariff philosophy more broadly. Sometimes groups like the chamber, or the National Association of Manufacturers or the Business Round Table, will appeal to Trump’s vanity as a dealmaker; other times they will explain how the president’s most loyal supporters are suffering the most. This strategy has produced limited results, most notably a temporary easing of trade tensions with China.
But business advocates are convinced it’s the only viable game plan.
“This administration has a general philosophy that is pro-business,” Craig Souser, a National Association of Manufacturers board member and chief executive officer of JLS Automation, a high-end manufacturer in York, Pennsylvania, told The Dispatch. “Being combative can get you tossed out of meetings, can burn a relationship; and that’s the last thing that you need.”
JLS Automation employs roughly 135 people and designs and manufactures high-end robotics for the food industry from component pieces that are machined and fabricated in Europe and Canada (domestic-supplier alternatives don’t exist.) Because of Trump’s tariffs, the company has halved growth projections for the first two quarters of this year. The original, rosy growth figures were based on assumptions that the president would focus primarily on tax cuts and deregulation.
Profits have also taken a hit, of up to 10 percent: The company has been forced to at least partially eat the cost of the tariffs for component parts ordered before the implementation of higher import levies. Overall, JLS Automation has cut profit forecasts for 2025 and expects to do even worse than last year—under a Democratic administration Souser describes as hostile to business. But as a practical matter, he still believes being on friendly terms with the Trump administration is the best strategy.
“I’m a strong believer that Donald Trump, while he may not at that moment even acknowledge that he’s buying what you’re saying, he may process it later and deal with it differently,” Souser said. “I don’t want to get thrown out of the meeting because I want my point heard.”
Trump has been a fervent believer in tariffs as pro-growth economic tools for decades. He campaigned on plans to wield the levies aggressively to make foreign trade more fair for American companies and workers. But corporate executives and small business owners, and the advocacy groups that represent their interests in Washington, D.C., were nonetheless genuinely surprised by Trump’s aggressive use of tariffs after being inaugurated in January, first against Canada and Mexico and then globally via his so-called “Liberation Day” announcement in April.
Under normal circumstances, the business community might fight back—vigorously and vocally. And while fear of being penalized by Trump for speaking out is certainly a factor in the corporate, kid-glove approach to the administration, there’s another, less discussed explanation. Amid the president’s caustic social media posts that grab all the headlines, his second-term administration has had a genial, open-door policy.
From Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer on down the chain of command, business community lobbyists tell The Dispatch the Trump administration has been willing to listen to their complaints about the tariffs and at least discuss options for mitigating the economic fallout. That’s much better treatment than they experienced under Biden, whose administration they say ignored them—even more so than Obama.
“This administration is perfectly willing to talk,” said a former congressional Republican aide who works closely with the business community and requested anonymity to discuss Trump. “I’ve talked to a lot of people who say: ‘You might not like what you hear but they are always willing to talk.’ It’s much different from the Heisman they received from Biden.”
The open-door policy is why the pharmaceutical industry is cautiously optimistic negotiations will lead to mitigation of a Trump executive order attempting to use federal price controls to slash the cost of prescription drugs. A source familiar with the industry’s thinking also emphasized that choosing not to go to war with Trump over this latest presidential directive does not equal appeasement.
The pharmaceutical industry has been supportive of some of the president’s deregulation and trade policies generally, not to mention new transparency guidelines he set for pharmacy benefit managers (firms that run prescription drug coverage services for insurers and other organizations) in an April 15 executive order. Trump also, so far, has largely excluded drugmakers from tariffs, with the exception being small levies that apply to imports from China.
Plus, the industry backs the administration’s goal, as laid out in the otherwise worrisome executive order, to enable pharmaceutical manufacturers to increase the prices they charge for prescription drugs in countries that use government regulations to keep consumer prices low.
“That’s the thing the media coverage has gotten wrong—that the business community must have their head in the sand or is just whistling past the graveyard because they’re not fighting back or criticizing the president,” the pharmaceutical source said. “Just because we’re not out beating our chest and screaming into a microphone like maybe the business community has in past engagements, doesn’t mean there’s not constructive dialogue and productive conversations at multiple receptor points in the administration.”
