In the days since President-elect\u00a0Donald Trump\u00a0won the\u00a0presidential race, Nicole Bivens Collinson\u2019s phone has barely stopped ringing.<\/p>\n
Collinson, who helps lead the international trade and government relations division at the lobbying firm Sandler, Travis & Rosenberg, said she is fielding \u201cdozens and dozens and dozens\u201d of calls from anxious U.S. companies looking to protect themselves from Trump\u2019s hardline tariff plans by finding loopholes and exemptions.<\/p>\n
\u201cAbsolutely everyone is calling,\u201d Collinson told CNBC. \u201cIt is nonstop.\u201d<\/p>\n
Over the course of the 2024 campaign, Trump made universal tariffs a core tenet of his economic platform, floating a 20% tax on all imports from all countries with a specifically harsh 60% rate for Chinese goods.<\/p>\n
That hyper-protectionist trade approach sent chills up the spines of economists, Wall Street analysts and industry leaders who warned that across-the-board tariffs could make production \u2014 and in turn, consumer prices \u2014 more expensive, just as they were recovering from pandemic-era inflation spikes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe threat of tariffs has alarmed retailers and a wide range of other U.S. businesses,\u201d David French, senior vice president of government relations at the National Retail Federation, told CNBC.\u00a0\u201cOur members have been working on contingency plans since President Trump secured the nomination.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ron Sorini, a principal at the lobbying firm Sorini, Samet & Associates, echoed that sentiment, noting that he takes at least two to three calls a day to field companies\u2019 concerns about the proposed tariff ramp-up, especially in China.<\/p>\n
\u2033[Companies] question where they should go, and how do they get the components out [of China]? How do they get the whole supply chain out?\u201d Sorini said.<\/p>\n
When Trump unleashed his first set of\u00a0China tariffs\u00a0in 2018, securing an exemption became a golden ticket in corporate America, a way to safeguard a company\u2019s China-based supply chains rather than paying the hefty price of relocation.<\/p>\n
And to obtain that golden ticket, it paid to know the right people.<\/p>\n
A 2021\u00a0research study\u00a0found that applications for Trump\u2019s first-term tariff exemptions were more likely to be approved when they came from lobbying firms whose employees had made political contributions to the Republican Party.<\/p>\n
Now, with Trump set to retake the White House in a matter of weeks, tariff escalation is becoming a more likely reality.<\/p>\n
And in corporate America, the race is on to find the right lobbyists to help companies rub shoulders with the right people, to give them an advantage in securing tariff loopholes.<\/p>\n
\u201cFirms are prepared,\u201d SUNY Buffalo finance professor Veljko Fotak, one of the authors of the 2021 study, told CNBC. \u201cThe real winners of this process are going to be the lawyers and lobbyists.\u201d<\/p>\n