President Donald Trump speaks to the National Association of Manufacturers on Sept. 29, in Washington. | Shawn Thew-Pool/Getty Images Trade Fighting against Trump’s trade war from within As other executives blast the president, the National Association of Manufacturers is gambling that it’s better to stay cozy with Trump.

As a candidate, Donald Trump railed against the Trans-Pacific Partnership, rattling manufacturers who preach free trade. Shortly after the election, Trump announced a 35 percent tax on companies that moved jobs overseas. And now, Trump shows little sign of backing off an escalating trade war, using the blunt instrument of tariffs to bludgeon China and other countries while U.S. manufacturers seek cover from foreign retaliation.

But as other executives and trade associations take a public stand against the president, the National Association of Manufacturers and its president, Jay Timmons, have struck a close — if still uneasy — partnership with Trump, betting it’s wiser to be on the inside than out as the administration wages a risky fight with the global business community.


“You can scream and yell all you want. I’ve never particularly found that to be effective,” Timmons said in an interview, when asked about corporate pushback on Trump’s tariffs. “We have somebody who is in office who has had a very specific view of the world when it comes to trade—for four decades—so he’s going to do what he’s going to do.”

Timmons has emerged as an unlikely Washington power center under the Trump administration, enjoying easy West Wing access and a bond with a president whose tactics have unnerved NAM’s largest members even as Trump plays industry booster on a national stage.

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During Trump’s presidency, the 123-year-old trade group has flourished, posting strong membership and revenue growth. Timmons has redirected resources to take advantage of NAM’s new platform and amped up hiring, bringing on White House spokesman Michael Short, Mitch McConnell speechwriter Brian Forest, and Michael Shapiro, a former adviser to House Speaker Paul Ryan.

On Friday, Timmons announced a multimillion-dollar acquisition of the Manufacturing Leadership Council, a research and networking group — a deal that will expand NAM’s reach.

Trump has benefited, too. NAM regularly supplies the White House with factory-floor venues — and a ready audience — for rallies and events. Timmons himself was instrumental in pushing tax reform legislation, helping the president land a crucial and early policy win. The trade group keeps the White House supplied with success stories to help Trump boast about his progress.

Timmons has also struck up a rapport with the president, despite their strikingly different styles and backgrounds.

Trump roared in to drain the swamp in Washington, a place Timmons has called home since 1983. Trump is a grandstander, quick to anger, who has been married three times. Timmons, an openly gay husband and father of three, is soft-spoken and not easily provoked. Trump came up in the rough-and-tumble world of New York real estate. Timmons has roots in Rust-Belt manufacturing.

“We’re not focused on personality, politics or process,” Timmons said, explaining NAM’s relationship with Trump. “I don’t think of us as bipartisan, I think of us as post-partisan.”

Timmons met Trump for the first time in June 2016 at the invitation of campaign donor Harold Hamm, CEO of energy company Continental Resources. In a two-hour meeting with other industry executives at Trump Tower, Timmons made a pitch for free trade and tax cuts. He left impressed with Trump’s questions.

That didn’t stop him from taking a shot at the candidate later that month in an op-ed supporting TPP after Trump called it a “disaster.”

“Some politicians have decided that it’s better for their political careers to spread myths about the TPP—and other trade agreements—than to deal with the facts,” Timmons wrote. “They have chosen to mislead voters.” Tagging Trump, he followed up with a tweet calling the candidate’s protectionism “a plan for losing.”

The relationship continued being rocky after the election, when Trump threatened to slap a steep tax on companies that outsource and went after the Air Force One contract owned by Boeing, a NAM board member.

Yet the incoming administration assured manufacturers it had their backs. Two days after the Boeing threat, Vice President-elect Mike Pence was at NAM headquarters promising to make good on a manufacturing agenda. Trump’s transition team asked NAM Chairman David Farr, CEO of Emerson Electric, to compile a list of regulations the industry wanted to kill.

It helped that Timmons had an early in. He was friends with Rick Dearborn from their days on the Hill, when Timmons worked for Sen. George Allen of Virginia and Dearborn was with Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama. Dearborn led the Trump transition and eventually would be named a White House deputy chief of staff.

By March of last year, Timmons and his members were in the West Wing talking tax reform with the president. As the meeting wound up, Trump issued an impromptu invitation.

“I was sitting next to the president and the meeting was over and he said, ‘Well OK, well thank you very much. Hey, does everybody want to see my office?’” Timmons said. “He says, ‘Come on, follow me.’”

Timmons, a player in Washington politics for decades, had never been inside the Oval Office. That visit wouldn’t be his last.

President Donald Trump listens as Jay Timmons, president of the National Association of Manufacturers, speaks during a meeting at the White House on March 31, 2017. | Evan Vucci/AP Photo

The Timmons-Trump alliance was cemented during tax reform. Timmons was key to getting the legislation passed, according to former Senate aides, pushing tax breaks for mom-and-pop businesses and providing cover to Republican members who took politically risky votes. Timmons pitched the final bill as a fair deal for businesses, helping ensure its passage.

But in the thick of the tax battle, Timmons broke from the White House, going to the mat against a Trump nominee. Trump had appointed Scott Garrett to lead the Export-Import Bank, which guarantees loans for foreign buyers of U.S. exports. As a congressman from New Jersey, Garrett had pushed to shutter the agency, and had enraged some members of his own party by withholding dues to the National Republican Congressional Committee because it recruited gay candidates.

When Timmons called the White House to talk about the importance of the bank, Trump called him back. It was another first for Timmons.

“He returned the call. I appreciated that,” Timmons said. “I’ve never had a president call me before.”

The kinship continued. In September 2017, in the thick of the tax and Ex-Im battles, Trump used a meeting of NAM’s board of directors to give a major speech predicting the tax bill would be “rocket fuel” for the economy. Timmons thanked Trump with a red bumper sticker that said “Friend of Manufacturing.”

A month later, it was Trump’s turn to play host. From the Oval Office, the president declared Oct. 6, 2017, National Manufacturing Day. Timmons and more than a dozen NAM members posed behind the Resolute Desk to mark the occasion.

“That was one of the best days of my life,” Timmons said. “It represented everything we’ve been working for.”

When the Senate rejected Garrett’s nomination in December, Trump didn’t lash out at Timmons. He asked for new candidates. One name offered up by NAM: Kimberly Reed, a Treasury official under President George W. Bush. When Trump nominated her, Timmons praised the pick as a “sterling choice.”

The president signed the tax bill into law a few days later, and Reed’s confirmation looks assured.

The wins kept coming for both sides. Four months after tax cuts took effect, a NAM survey found evidence they were working, handing Trump an opportunity to crow about his signature legislative win in a Rose Garden ceremony. Timmons was back at the West Wing in May, working on the administration’s apprenticeship program with Ivanka Trump and Labor Secretary Alex Acosta.

Now the Trump-Timmons partnership is being tested as the president marches the country toward a full-blown trade war and NAM has shown little power to stop him. He has upended decades-old trade treaties and questioned the loyalty of multinational corporations. Another $200 billion in China tariffs is in the works and automakers could be targeted next. The president on Friday threatened even more punishing taxes on Chinese imports if Beijing doesn’t change its trade and technology policies.

But while organizations like the National Retail Federation have publicly scolded Trump for a “reckless escalation,” Timmons has taken a more diplomatic tack.

“It’s not the way I would negotiate it, but the last time I looked I wasn’t elected president,” Timmons said. “If this is a better way to encourage investment here in the United States, and create jobs and wage growth, we’ll have to see.”

But as trade conflicts mount, NAM’s diverse membership is giving Timmons some room to maneuver. In 2006, NAM’s smaller members mounted a revolt against the multinationals that typically set the group’s trade agenda, pushing them to endorse legislation that would give the U.S. power to retaliate against China and other countries that manipulate their currency to gain an export edge.

The effort failed, and some of those same small companies now are cheering Trump’s tariffs and big-stick swagger.

“I’m extremely happy,” said William Jones, president of Penn United Technology Inc., a precision tooler near Pittsburgh. “He’s adding tariffs, but the endgame is to bring everybody to the table and renegotiate. We haven’t had anybody to this point willing to do this and play hardball.”

In June, more than 50 business groups lined up behind legislation that would curb Trump’s ability to impose tariffs for national security reasons. In a letter to Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, American Petroleum Institute and dozens of other groups wrote that they were “deeply concerned” about the president’s unrestricted use of Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act.

NAM’s signature was conspicuously absent, its influence effectively neutralized by some of its biggest members, which support tariffs on steel and aluminum.

“NAM members who are steel consumers feel like we are in Groundhog Day,” said one manufacturing lobbyist unhappy with the group’s low-key approach. “We don't understand why we're here again and our trade association is still sidelined on this issue.”

So far, Trump isn’t budging on tariffs, and it’s unlikely Timmons can change the president’s mind.

“It’s fair to question the extent to which any outside organization has been able to move the needle on this. But it’s very clear to say that because of the objective approach the NAM has taken, they are taken very seriously by the White House,” said Kevin Kolevar, vice president of government affairs at Dow Chemical Co., a NAM member. “When they publicly disagree, and they do, they’re still a big part of the conversation.”

