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The “new golden age,” President Donald Trump promised has arrived — on K Street.
Trump’s second term is on pace to be the most lucrative period in history for Beltway lobbyists.
Although the data is still a bit incomplete, it’s already clear that money was spent on lobbying the federal government in 2025 than any year in history. When adjusted for inflation, 2025 lobbying spending was on par with the peak year, 2009, when Barack Obama’s Hope and Change stimulated a deluge of corporate lobbying.
Greater investment in lobbying is the natural result of Trump’s style of governance. Inconsistent, heavy-handed, and arbitrary federal policy ensures that every company needs to pay more attention to Washington, in order to avoid tariffs, get subsidies, or tweak regulations and mandates to their favor. Also, Trump’s attack on entrenched beneficiaries of federal largesse sparked a lobbying reaction.
There were winners and losers in Trump’s first year, but the lobbyist friends of the Quid-Pro-Quo President made it out the best.
Record numbers
The Lobbying Disclosure Act requires lobbying firms to file a quarterly report for each client, listing their lobbyists, the issues they lobbied on, the agencies or houses of Congress they lobbied, and the amount they were paid. Companies that lobby file similar reports.
Fourth-quarter filings for 2025 were due on Jan. 20, and the numbers suggest record lobbying spending.
To precisely count total lobbying spending is difficult because some of that spending appears twice in the LDA database, reported by both the client and the lobbying firm. But the available numbers make it obvious that a lobbying record has been set. In the first three quarters of this year, $3.77 billion was spent on lobbying, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which is 12% higher than the previous total, recorded in 2024.
Adjusted for inflation, the annual record was in 2009, and there’s reason to believe 2025’s spending equaled or exceeded that. If you use September 2009 and September 2025 as the benchmarks, then the $2.53 billion in January-through-September of 2009 is nearly exactly equal to the $3.77 billion in that same period in 2025.
Where we can count precisely, we see multiple records broken.
Ballard Partners
Ballard Partners, the lobbying firm founded by Trump’s former attorney, and from which Trump hired his White House chief of staff and attorney general, in 2025 set a record for the most lucrative year in lobbying in U.S. history, even after adjusting for inflation.
Ballard pulled in $82 million from more than 220 clients in 2025, if you add up the reported results in its quarterly reports and its termination reports. That put Ballard ahead of the $74 million for Brownstein, Hyatt, Farber, and Schrek.
Ballard’s haul is also four times what they earned last year, before Trump returned to office. In 2025, former Ballard lobbyists Susie Wiles and Pam Bondi became White House chief of staff and attorney general, respectively.
Firm founder and president Brian Ballard, Wiles and Bondi’s former boss, was Donald Trump’s personal attorney and a top donor and fundraiser. Ballard was the finance chairman of Trump’s 2016 campaign, raised more than $50 million to elect Trump, and personally donated $250,000 to Trump’s 2024 election efforts.
That’s why Ballard’s lobbying receipts quadrupled this year. The firm registered 245 clients between Election Day 2024 and the end of 2025, most of those coming in the first weeks or months after Trump’s victory.
Consider Nippon Steel, which Trump said he would not allow to buy U.S. Steel. Nippon hired Ballard after Trump secured the Republican nomination in early 2024. In June 2025, Trump flipped and agreed to the purchase. (Nippon terminated the contract with Ballard at the end of that month.)
In March, Trump announced a “Crypto Strategic Reserve” and named three cryptocurrencies it would include. It turns out that tweet had been written for him by a Ballard employee and one of the currencies was issued by a Ballard client.
It seems that nearly everyone Trump threatened with budget cuts or other adversarial action hired as a lobbyist worked for a firm connected to Trump. PBS and Harvard hired Ballard when DOGE threatened its funding.
Tariff lobbying
Trump’s tariff regime, in particular, has created a lobbying swarm.
More than 800 companies hired new lobbyists to lobby on trade or tariffs in 2025, according to a search of the LDA database — about double the previous record set in 2019. This includes giant retailers such as Walmart, manufacturers like Whirlpool, plus foreign companies and trade associations.
If you look at all quarterly filings, not merely new registrations, the 3rd quarter of 2025 set a record with more than 2,300 that mention trade or tariffs, about double the total last year.
Tariffs are lobbying fuel, especially as Trump administers them. Tariffs are not uniform or flat. Under Trump, they are not stable, predictable, or permanent. They don’t require congressional approval, but they appear, disappear, rise, and fall on Trump’s whim.
Tariffs have millions of exemptions, which also come and go. If you can convince the right person in the White House or the office of the U.S. Trade Representative, you can get your export to the U.S., or your import from Mexico exempted from the tariffs.
In Trump’s first term, Everett Eissenstat was deputy director of the National Economic Council and was the top adviser on economic diplomacy before he cashed out to K Street.
TARIFF POLITICS YIELD CRONY CAPITALISM
Since Trump’s election, Eissenstat, a lobbyist at Patton Boggs, has added 16 new clients who want to tweak tariff policies to their benefit. For instance, Kia hired Patton Boggs in February, and within a month, the business press reported that competing CEOs were “howling” that Trump’s tariffs were “unfair because international automakers like Kia are essentially getting a free ride, whereas imports from Mexico and Canada — also part of a free trade agreement — are slated for 25% duties starting April 2.”
The tumult and inconsistency certainly don’t create the conditions for prosperity — except on K Street.
