The Determinants of Foreign Lobbying on US Trade Policy

The combination of the rise of geopolitical tensions, companies' political activity and anti-trade perception has increased the relevance of discussing external influence on the United States (US) trade policy. Although literature widely discusses lobbying, foreign lobbying is a perspective that few studies have considered while analyzing firms' political behavior (see Lee (2022) for an exception). Still, there is much variation to account for as pertains to the volume of US lobbying by country of origin. What explains that variation? We argue that firms lobby the US trade policy according to their political-economic links with the country and according to how distant from the US and economically relevant each of their home countries are. In advancing that argument, we put together the literature on firm-level lobbying determinants and gravitation.