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lobbyists
Trump Picks Corporate Lobbyist for Key Tax Policy Role
Ken Kies has a client list that includes Microsoft, which stands to benefit from the president-elect's proposed corporate tax cut to the tune of $4 billion per year.
Jan 03, 2025
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump announced late Thursday that he has chosen a longtime corporate lobbyist and Republican donor to serve as assistant secretary for tax policy at the Treasury Department as GOP lawmakers prepare to craft another massive giveaway to the rich and major companies.
Ken Kies is currently managing director of the Federal Policy Group, a lobbying firm that was hired last year by Microsoft, the Cruise Lines International Association, the American Automotive Leasing Association, and other corporate interests. If Trump and the incoming Republican Congress succeed in lowering the corporate tax rate to 15%, Microsoft would receive an annual tax break of $4 billion, according to one analysis.
Kies' profile on the Federal Policy Group's website touts the "significant legislative and regulatory results" he has delivered for his clients, "which include major corporations, trade associations, and coalitions of companies with common objectives."
"Mr. Kies has led coalition efforts to enact legislation responding to the World Trade Organization's ruling against U.S. foreign sales corporation benefits, to avert enactment of broad 'corporate tax shelter' legislation that would have an adverse impact on legitimate business transactions, and to reverse Treasury regulations targeting 'hybrid' arrangements of U.S. multinational corporations, among other projects," the profile continues.
If confirmed by the Senate, Kies would work alongside billionaire hedge fund manager Scott Bessent—Trump's pick to lead the Treasury Department—as the second Trump administration pursues an extension of regressive 2017 tax cuts that are set to expire at the end of the year, as well as another rate cut for corporations.
The Washington Postreported Thursday that Republicans are planning to offset some of the enormous projected cost of the proposed tax package with tariffs, cuts to federal nutrition assistance, and work requirements for Medicaid recipients. The GOP is also pushing to eliminate the Education Department, roll back clean energy programs, and prevent Medicare from covering obesity treatments.
In addition to Kies, Trump said Thursday that he has selected Samantha Schwab to serve as deputy chief of staff at the Treasury Department. Schwab is the granddaughter of billionaire investor Charles Schwab, who donated $1 million to Trump's 2017 inaugural fundraising committee, according toBloomberg.
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The Biggest Delegation at Plastic Treaty Talks? Plastic Industry Lobbyists
"Allowing fossil fuel and petrochemical companies to exert their influence in these negotiations is like letting foxes guard the henhouse," said one campaigner.
Nov 27, 2024
At the fifth and final session of the United Nations Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee to finalize a global plastics treaty in Busan, South Korea, one anti-pollution campaigner noted on Wednesday that "waste pickers, Indigenous peoples, youth leaders, and frontline community members have left their families to travel thousands of miles to be here, not to protect their business interests, but because they are fighting for survival."
But a new analysis from the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) raises questions about how marginalized communities fighting plastic pollution will ensure their voices aren't drowned out by the fossil fuel and chemical industry lobbyists in attendance.
"The fact that they are forced to compete for the ear of their representatives with the very industry that is poisoning their communities is a serious injustice," said Ana Rocha, director of the global plastics program at the Global Alliance for Incinerators Alternatives.
CIEL's analysis finds that more lobbyists with a vested interest in continuing plastic production are attending the talks, with 220 fossil fuel and chemical lobbyists represented.
That number makes the industries the biggest delegation at the negotiations, where advocates are pushing for a final treaty that includes legally binding caps on plastic production—not just provisions dictating plastic waste management, which the industry has promoted.
Under the status quo, plastic production is set to triple by 2060. Approximately 460 million tonnes of plastics are currently produced each year.
From 2000-19, plastic waste more than doubled to 353 million tonnes, and only 9% was recycled, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
According to more than 900 independent scientists who signed a declaration demanding an ambitious plastics treaty aimed at ending plastic pollution by 2040, improvements in waste management alone cannot protect the planet and public health from pollution.
But in Busan, industry lobbyists outnumber representatives of the Scientists' Coalition for an Effective Plastics Treaty by 3-to-1.
Only 89 delegates represent the Pacific small island developing states, where the average waste generation per person is 48% higher than the global average due to heavy reliance on packaged imports.
The entire Latin American and Caribbean region has only 165 delegates, and the European Union and its member states combined sent 191 delegates.
Sixteen countries—China, the Dominican Republic, Egypt, Finland, Iran, Kazakhstan, and Malaysia—have included plastic industry lobbyists within their official delegations.
"Allowing fossil fuel and petrochemical companies to exert their influence in these negotiations is like letting foxes guard the henhouse," said Von Hernandez, global coordinator for Break Free From Plastic. "Their oversized presence threatens to turn a critical environmental agreement into a charade, undermining serious efforts to curb plastic production and pollution. Government negotiators must stand firm and ensure these talks are not hijacked by those with vested interests in maintaining the status quo."
CIEL noted that with each Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee meeting, it has observed an increase in the number of fossil fuel and petrochemical industry lobbyists included in the talks. Environmental scientists have reported intimidation and harassment by lobbyists at the meetings.
The oil and gas industry watchdog group Fieldnotes published a report last week showing that in addition to sending lobbyists to Busan, the National Association for PET Container Resources (NAPCOR) has embarked on a yearslong campaign to mislead consumers about the recyclability of disposable plastic products. The coordinated effort has included an infomercial hosted by actor Dennis Quaid and paid deals with TikTok influencers who repeat industry talking points in their videos.
"We have watched industry lobbyists surrounding the negotiations with sadly well-known tactics of obstruction, distraction, intimidation, and misinformation," said Delphine Levi Alvares, global petrochemical campaign coordinator at CIEL, on Wednesday. "Their strategy—lifted straight from the climate negotiations playbook—is designed to preserve the financial interests of countries and companies who are putting their fossil-fueled profits above human health, human rights, and the future of the planet."
"The mandate for this treaty is very clear: ending plastic pollution. Ever-growing evidence from independent scientists, frontline communities, and Indigenous peoples clearly shows that this won't be achieved without reducing plastic production," she added. "The choice is clear: our lives or their bottom line."
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Fearing More 'Blatant Corruption' in Second Trump Term, Watchdog Issues Ethics Blueprint
"Should the flagrant disregard of ethics rules return, the political opposition must use all tools at their disposal to advance ethics reforms and neutralize as much harm as possible."
Oct 31, 2024
A leading U.S. watchdog group on Thursday published what it called "a blueprint for strengthening the federal government's ethics programs across the executive, legislative, and judicial branches" amid Democrats' inadequate reforms and the prospect of more "outright scandals and blatant corruption" under a possible second administration of former Republican President Donald Trump.
The Revolving Door Project publication—titled Rebuilding Public Trust: Six Principles to Guide Reform—notes that "Americans' trust in government is near historic lows, a trend that both preceded and continued after the blatant corruption of the Trump administration."
"Democratic administrations, too, made limited progress in curtailing the more routine forms of corruption that combine with dramatic scandals to undercut public trust," the report continues, adding that President Joe Biden's 2021 executive order on ethics "was only a modest step up on what has been standard, failing to take the large strides necessary to close the revolving door between private and public sectors, mandate divestitures, or require compliance with stringent transparency measures."
"The next administration will be a crucial test of ethical management of the federal government."
"Congressional Democrats' reform proposals have also stopped short of addressing mundane corruption, even as many Democrats have been implicated in congressional trading scandals and leaders like Nancy Pelosi have expressed disdain for commonsense measures like banning congressional stock trading," the paper asserts, referring to the House speaker emeritus from California.
"The Supreme Court and federal judiciary have been swamped by ethics scandals, with investigative reporting exposing judges' and justices' failures to disclose lavish trips from wealthy backers and failures to recuse in cases involving their financial interests—yet some mainstream judicial ethics proposals stop short of even holding the judiciary to the same ethics standards as Congress," the report adds.
The publication enumerates "six principles that should guide ethics reform efforts":
- Practices that can be plausibly perceived as corrupt must be outlawed;
- Successful ethics program will consist of bright-line rules that are simple to administer and enforce;
- Ethics rules should be as comprehensive as possible in both who and what they cover;
- Ethics rules should distinguish between corporate lobbying that serves private interests, and lobbying by public interest groups;
- Ethics offices must have the legal authority, independence, and resources to find and investigate breaches and hold powerful actors accountable; and
- The ethics system, no matter how strong, must proactively invite public scrutiny, not cower from it.
"By slowing the turn of the revolving door and banning all political appointees, federal judges, Supreme Court justices, and members of Congress from owning individual stocks, the next administration and Congress could make huge strides in rebuilding Americans' trust that the government works in the public interest, not corporate interests," Revolving Door Project research director and report co-author Andrea Beaty said in a statement Thursday. "And our recommendations to promote transparency and strong enforcement would work to cement such advances."
Trump—whose first term was marred by thousands of conflicts of interest and many other alleged and proven improprieties—is already one of the most conflicted presidents in U.S. history, given his business connections with foreign governments and holdings in industries governed by federal regulators.
Earlier this month, Democrats on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee published a report detailing how, while in office, the former president used his Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. to enrich himself with hundreds of illegal or questionable payments from federal and state officials, job-seekers, and presidential pardon recipients.
"With Trump unabashedly previewing a return to blatant corruption and Americans in a period of near-historically low trust in government, the next administration will be a crucial test of ethical management of the federal government," Revolving Door Project executive director Jeff Hauser said in a statement.
"Unless the next administration prioritizes robust ethics reforms, trust in government institutions will erode further," he added. "And should the flagrant disregard of ethics rules return, the political opposition must use all tools at their disposal to advance ethics reforms and neutralize as much harm as possible."
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