American industry has taken a less antagonistic approach to the president’s signature trade policy, opting for lobbying over lawsuits.
Major American companies have arguably the most to lose from President Donald Trump’s tariffs. But they have largely stayed out of the legal fight challenging the levies, opting instead to quietly lobby against the policy for fear of angering a vindictive White House.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case challenging the president’s use of a federal law called the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, to set the tariffs. Challengers argue Trump exceeded the powers granted to the president under the act, which allows him to “regulate” international commerce during a time of national emergency.
Small companies have led the way in filing legal challenges to the tariffs. But larger companies like those that populate the Dow Jones haven’t followed suit, blunting the prominence of the legal campaign against the administration, said John Vecchione, senior litigation counsel at the New Civil Liberties Alliance, a libertarian nonprofit that filed the first lawsuit against the tariffs.
Doing so would have meant publicly challenging the Trump administration and suffering the likely backlash.
“It has been complete cowardice on the part of industry,” he said. “What about an alternate world where all the importers — all the Amazons, all the Walmarts, all the Targets — what if they had all said, ‘No, we’re not going to take this.’”
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Consumer Technology Association, trade associations that represent some of the biggest companies in the world, are some of the few business groups that have waded into the legal dispute in recent months by filing amicus briefs arguing that Trump lacks the power to impose the tariffs.
Some smaller employers filed similar briefs, outlining the impact of tariffs on their businesses.
“What if a big company had done that? They could talk about billions of dollars and jobs lost and all the rest of it,” Vecchione said. “All those stories were important in this case and none of those stories are being told because of corporate cowardice.”
The Chamber weighed filing a legal challenge to the tariffs in April but decided against the move, opting to focus on lobbying the administration, POLITICO previously reported.
While most business groups have remained on the sidelines of the legal fight, they continue to push back against the tariffs in less headline-grabbing ways, according to lobbyists and a person familiar with the efforts granted anonymity to speak candidly.
“We haven’t had the type of loud, aggressive lobbying you would have seen in past administrations, or on other issues, for obvious reasons. That doesn’t mean business hasn’t been engaged,” said one person familiar with trade association lobbying efforts on tariffs. “People are talking, they are trying to educate the administration and the Hill about what all of this means for workers, for consumers.”
“It’s pretty apparent that this is the president’s signature policy move,” the person added. “Everyone knows that it doesn’t matter how much noise you’re going to make, these are deeply held positions that the president has on trade and tariffs policies.”
Gary Shapiro, president of the Consumer Technology Association, said tariffs have been the most heavily lobbied issue on Capitol Hill this year. Business leaders have been “all over Congress on this,” he said.
Last month, the National Retail Federation, which represents big box retailers as well as smaller businesses, held its sixth tariff-focused fly-in since Trump’s so-called reciprocal tariffs were announced in April.
Businesses’ efforts to lean on the Hill have had some limited impact. In a series of three largely symbolic votes last week, four Senate Republicans crossed party lines to rebuke Trump’s so-called reciprocal tariffs as well as his levies on Canada and Brazil.
Industry has made its issues with the tariffs known to the White House as well, but the most success has come from charm offensives by top business leaders. Tech giant Apple, for instance, benefited from a reprieve on tech products imported from China after overtures by CEO Tim Cook.
“If you look at some of the exemptions out there,” Shapiro said, “It is clearly a personal relationship that’s been made between the CEO and the president.”
Shapiro characterized CTA’s engagement with the administration as “positive” and “constructive,” even though the trade group and Trump “see the world differently” when it comes to tariffs.
“The White House has been very open to having conversations with industry about tariff relief,” said Samir Kapadia, who leads the trade practice at the lobbying firm Vogel Group. “For those that think that that’s not possible, or happening, I think they’re misinformed.”
What matters more, Kapadia said, is how companies frame their tariff concerns to the administration.
“The typical engagement on tariff relief has been around a very singular conversation around severe economic harm,” he said. “I think that’s only one side of the coin. If you don’t have that other side of the coin, around how it serves national interests, how it serves the president’s agenda, you will most certainly fail in any conversation.”
The amicus brief filed by the Chamber and CTA calls the tariffs a “threat” that “transcends administrations and the politics of the moment.”
“If this President is permitted to invoke IEEPA to impose unlimited tariffs to deal with the asserted ‘national emergencies’ of trade deficits and drug trafficking, then future ones will have similarly expansive authority to impose worldwide tariffs based on their own objectives,” lawyers for the groups wrote.
“I thought we’d have a lot more people on, who wanted to be on, but they had internal decision-making [and] decided they wouldn’t,” Shapiro said.
Shapiro, whose group has been among the most vocal critics of Trump’s tariffs from the beginning, declined to name any other business groups that were approached about signing on to the amicus brief. “A lot of groups certainly agree with us,” he said, though he conceded that “people are concerned about speaking out.”
“We’ve seen a general quiet of people who generally speak” out on policy issues “since Jan. 20,” he added.
Shapiro, who plans on attending Wednesday’s arguments, argued that CTA’s opposition to the tariffs stems from the group’s longstanding positions on global trade. And while he expressed confidence that Trump’s tariff authorities won’t be upheld, Shapiro said his members just want certainty.
“Businesses have the right to know what the law is, and they have a right to some consistency,” he said. “And in this case, they’re suffering from [lack of] both.”