PoliticoChinese companies absent from DC lobbying on trade war
Instead of encouraging its own companies to join the trade war fight in Washington, China has turned to what may be an outdated playbook
This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by Adam Behsudi and Marianne Levine on politico.com July 19, 2018.
The White House and Beijing may be escalating an increasingly hostile trade war with harsh words and cascading waves of tariffs, but there’s one battlefield where the Chinese aren’t fighting back: Washington.
US and European companies have been in an all-out sprint to hire lobbyists to battle for global free trade ever since President Donald Trump started tearing up treaties and slapping penalties on imports from furniture to auto parts. But even though Chinese firms stand to lose the most from Trump’s aggressive moves, only a handful of the very largest – such as tech giants ZTE and Huawei – have lobbyists on retainer or staff in the US.
The reason is largely cultural and historical. Many Chinese firms are partly government-owned, and they’re used to relying on officials in Beijing or their American business partners to fight for their interests. But they could be missing opportunities to get their products off Trump’s growing tariff lists. And advocates for Chinese investment in the US, which has plummeted to a seven-year low, fear the silence is just contributing to an increasingly hostile environment.
“I’ve been frankly trying to persuade Chinese companies to do more lobbying without a whole lot of success,” said Bill Black, president of the Greater Washington China Investment Center. “Seeing what was on the horizon, I had tried to convince them to work with local American communities to advocate for a more open and friendly approach to investment.”
Siva Yam, president of the United States of America-China Chamber of Commerce, a non-profit that represents US and Chinese companies, said business culture in China and internationally is “controlled and led by the Chinese government,” and Chinese companies are therefore less inclined to “openly doing lobbying.”