Welcome to Pay Dirt—exclusive reporting and research from The Daily Beast’s Lachlan Markay on corruption, campaign finance, and influence-peddling in the nation’s capital. For Beast Inside members only.
The Trump administration’s hard line on China is turning into a K Street gold rush. Trade restrictions and national-security crackdowns have led to an unprecedented spike in the number of Chinese-owned firms seeking hired help to navigate the increasingly hostile policy arena.
Since 2017, companies that reported a Chinese ownership interest have collectively signed 48 new lobbying contracts, according to disclosure records. Since last year, such companies have inked deals with as many K Street firms as they did during the entirety of the Obama administration.
The sums of money changing hands are far larger as well. From 2017 through March of this year, federal lobbying firms reported receiving about $2.3 million from Chinese-owned companies. That’s about as much as they received from 2006 through 2016.
The dramatic rise in that lobbying activity makes sense. Rarely has the U.S. government so vehemently targeted not just Chinese interests in a general fashion, but specific companies. Firms such as Huawei, ZTE, and Hikvision have been specifically targeted by Congress and the administration over concerns about security, privacy, espionage, and unfair trade practices. That’s created a policy environment where the natural course of action is to bring on a team of Beltway influencers.
These lobbying numbers don’t include those reported under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which governs lobbying disclosure on behalf of clients with deeper ties with foreign governments, such as the Chinese state. Rather, they show stepped up policy advocacy activity by firms that maintain at least nominal independence from the government, but have nonetheless found themselves caught up in policy fights that could potentially affect major strategic interests of both countries for decades to come.
For K Street, that sort of upheaval can be extremely lucrative. And some big names in lobbying have stepped in to represent the Chinese-owned firms seeking reprieve from that geopolitical tension. They include Mercury Public Affairs, which has represented ZTE, Hikvision, and Huawei. The latter has also enlisted the services of the firms Jones Day, American Continental Group, and Steptoe & Johnson.
The individual lobbyists themselves are bringing unrivaled expertise to the table. Among the roster of Jones Day’s advocates on Huawei’s behalf is Samir Jain, who, until recently, directed cybersecurity policy for the Obama White House's National Security Council.
Get the data:
