AKIN SNAGS TRUMP TRADE VETERAN: Kelly Ann Shaw, who served as one of President Donald Trump’s top trade advisers during his first administration, has decamped from Hogan Lovells to join Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld as a partner in the lobbying practice.
— Shaw most recently co-led Hogan Lovells’ geopolitical risk and national security program. She joined the firm in 2020 from the White House, where she was a deputy assistant to the president for international economics and helped lead the administration’s negotiations for the phase one trade deal with China signed in 2020.
— Shaw said in an interview that she’s eager to advise Akin’s clients on “navigating what is the single-biggest shake up of the global trading system of my lifetime” and impart some of the wisdom that she learned from being at the negotiating table for dozens of trade deals over the years, but particularly under Trump.
— “I think that everyone has to accept a certain level of ambiguity and uncertainty. That’s part of the president’s calling card,” Shaw told PI. “When it comes to negotiations, you never quite know exactly where he stands, and having been a negotiator for him, I can say that that strategy is very helpful.” That unpredictability is less of an asset when you’re representing the business community, she conceded.
— Shaw also said she’d advise clients looking to engage with almost any White House — but especially Trump’s — that you get more bees with honey. “Instead of coming with a problem, come with an idea, and come with an idea that rows in the same direction, policywise, that the administration is going,” she said.
— Shaw’s arrival at Akin comes a matter of days after Clete Willems, her predecessor as one of Trump’s senior White House trade advisers, left the firm to take over global public policy at Netflix.
— Before joining the White House, Shaw was a Republican trade counsel for the House Ways and Means Committee, where she was the panel’s top lawyer for USMCA negotiations. She also spent six years at USTR in both Washington and Geneva.
Happy Monday and welcome to PI, where we’re just glad Journalism ended this weekend’s race on the podium, the way things have been going. Send other Kentucky Derby takeaways and lobbying tips. You can add me on Signal, email me at coprysko@politico.com, and be sure to follow me on X: @caitlinoprysko.
ANNALS OF ETHICS: “Tim Parlatore is a personal attorney and top adviser to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. At the same time, he’s suing the Navy and defending private clients against the U.S. government,” Daniel and POLITICO’s Josh Gerstein report.
— “Parlatore, who represented Donald Trump in a criminal case two years ago and rejoined the Navy Reserve in March to aid Hegseth, was recently tapped to coordinate the leak investigation that led to chaos at the Pentagon,” and he “was also reportedly in the Signal group with Hegseth’s wife and brother in which the Defense secretary shared details of a strike on Yemen.”
— “But despite Parlatore’s deep involvement at the Pentagon, he is pursuing litigation against the Navy. … While Parlatore insists his arrangement is above board, it’s highly unusual for a sitting top adviser for a Cabinet secretary to be working in the government while at the same time representing clients suing the government, or working for clients as they fight off the feds.”
SHEIN’S BET ON TRUMP: “Many companies have shamelessly courted President Donald Trump, hoping to curry favor with a uniquely transactional American leader, but few appear to have gone as far as Shein,” Wired’s Timothy McLaughlin reports.
— The company has had several high-ranking Trump officials on its payroll, such as FBI Director Kash Patel, deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and even U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, who in his former role at King & Spalding provided Shein “legal advice around international trade policy,” according to internal documents.
— Greer reportedly helped a Shein executive craft the response to a bipartisan congressional inquiry on Shein’s business practices — even as Greer testified publicly weeks later that China presented an “existential” threat to U.S. industries.
— “But despite the company’s overtures, Trump has dealt Shein a series of devastating blows since returning to office,” including placing steep tariffs on Chinese imports and moving to close the de minimis loophole so critical to Shein’s business model.
JUDGE BRUSHES BACK TRUMP WAR ON BIG LAW: “President Donald Trump’s executive order that sought to punish the law firm Perkins Coie for working with Hillary Clinton and other Democrats is unconstitutional, ‘motivated by retaliation’ and cannot be enforced, a federal judge ruled,” POLITICO’s Daniel Barnes reports.
— “It marks the biggest setback so far for Trump’s campaign against law firms that have represented his political enemies — though key provisions of the orders have been blocked as four firms challenged them in court.” It’s the first of several pending final rulings in law firms’ legal challenges, but appeals are expected.
UNLIKELY UNBEDFELLOWS: “The Republican-led push to abolish the US estate tax has provoked opposition from a seemingly surprising source,” according to Bloomberg’s Steven Dennis and Ben Steverman: the “financial advisers the wealthy pay to manage their money and keep down their taxes.”
— “Many of the country’s richest families, who spend handsomely to lessen the tax burden on their heirs, have fought unsuccessfully for decades to repeal the 109-year-old levy. But industry group Finseca, which represents some 11,000 members including life insurance brokers and others who provide financial products and services, warns that many clients ultimately would be ill-served by an outright termination of the 40% tax.”
— That’s pitting the group against “more than 200 groups representing car dealers, farm interests, construction companies, funeral directors, plastics manufacturers, alcoholic beverage distributors, dude ranchers, and grocers that have lined up to back Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s bid to repeal the estate tax.”
FIRST IN PI — LIBERAL GROUPS PUSH TO BLOCK JUDICIARY BILL:Three dozen left-leaning advocacy groups and labor organizations are calling on lawmakers to reject a bill that would gradually increase the size of the federal judiciary.
— The House Judiciary Committee approved the JUDGES Act in March, teeing it up for a floor vote. In a letter to lawmakers led by liberal judicial advocacy group Demand Justice, the progressive groups argued that supporting the measure now “violates both the intent and bipartisan spirit in which these kinds of bills have been considered and passed.”
— The JUDGES Act was initially the result of a bipartisan agreement last year that aimed to address understaffed courts by incrementally adding 66 new federal judgeships over the course of a decade. Former President Joe Biden vetoed the bill in January, accusing House Republicans of deliberately waiting until after the election to take up the bill, undermining its aims.
— While the signatories, which also included the AFL-CIO, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, SEIU, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the National Association of Consumer Advocates, wrote that they “acknowledge the need for additional judgeships,” they pointed to Trump’s frequent attacks on the judiciary during his second term.
— “As President Trump and the administration pursue expanded executive powers that threaten our public services and civil rights, our district courts and district judges must remain an essential check on the other branches of our government,” they argued.
MEANWHILE, ACROSS THE POND: “The European Parliament has toughened its rules on lobbying more than two years after a cash-for-influence scandal that triggered one of the largest corruption investigations to hit the EU,” per POLITICO’s Max Griera.
— Starting this month, “anyone entering the Parliament’s buildings to advocate on behalf of outside bodies has been forced to activate badges and register the purpose of their visit. The plan aims to keep tabs on who is talking to whom in the wake of what became known as ‘Qatargate’ ― named after one of the countries linked to allegedly offering cash and gifts in return for favors.”
— Lobbyists entering the Parliament will now have to activate their badges “every time they visit via a small terminal with badge readers at the entrances. That will require them to declare whether they are meeting an MEP or staff member or attending a parliamentary meeting or event taking place in the building, according to an email sent to all accredited lobbyists circulated last month.”
A NEW EV COALITION: More than a dozen fleet managers, charging companies and vehicle manufacturers are launching a coalition to defend a credit that’s received relatively little attention in the IRA fight: the credit for commercial electric vehicles, our friends at Morning Energy report.
— GOP lawmakers have largely eyed that credit, known as 45W, for elimination because it contains what they call the “leasing loophole” — through which the incentive intended for commercial fleets is being claimed by car manufacturers’ financing arms to make consumers’ EV leases cheaper.
— But the American Fleet Leadership Coalition is making the case to keep it, at least for businesses electrifying their fleets. Josh Green, the CEO of fleet manager Inspiration Mobility and founder of the new coalition, said it helps achieve GOP goals by reducing costs on fuel and maintenance for small businesses and supporting domestic manufacturing.
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