Chief Executive Officer of Apple Tim Cook (L) arrives on the White House to attend a state dinner honoring French President Emmanuel Macron, in Washington, DC, on December 1, 2022.
Roberto Schmidt | AFP | Getty Images
Apple ramped up its lobbying spending final 12 months, growing its whole for the 12 months by 44% in comparison with 2021, in accordance with public disclosures.
Though Apple’s lobbying spending grew essentially the most up to now 12 months in comparison with friends within the trade, it nonetheless spends far under different tech giants. Apple’s whole lobbying efforts got here to just about $9.4 million for all of 2022, a file for the corporate however just under Microsoft’s $9.8 million and Google’s $10.9 million.
Amazon and Facebook-owner Meta topped the checklist by whole spend, doling out $19.7 million and $19.2 million, respectively. For Amazon, that was a roughly 2% enhance in spend in comparison with 2021 and it was a 4.6% lower for Meta.
The 5 tech giants spent a mixed practically $69 million lobbying the federal authorities final 12 months, a 5% enhance in comparison with 2021.
In 2022, tech giants confronted the prospect of bipartisan laws that might be extremely disruptive to their enterprise fashions. Such measures included antitrust payments that might prohibit massive platforms or on-line marketplaces from unfairly selling their very own merchandise over others listed on their boards, or stop app shops from forcing builders to make use of their in-app fee system, from which they usually take a minimize.
Those measures in the end by no means bought a vote on the ground of both chamber of Congress — a undeniable fact that the payments’ sponsors have blamed not less than partly on an aggressive tech affect marketing campaign.
Apple’s public submitting reveals it engaged on the antitrust payments within the fourth quarter, in addition to on points together with on-line privateness, taxes, semiconductor coverage, content material moderation, local weather change, immigration and LGBTQ points together with the Respect for Marriage Act. Lobbying disclosures don’t embrace particulars on what precisely firms advocated for of their discussions.
An Apple spokesperson was not instantly out there to remark.
Other tech firms engaged on most of the similar points, although some additionally lobbied on subjects extra particular to their companies. For instance, Amazon engaged on cloud computing and the INFORM Consumers Act, a invoice that lately handed by way of Congress that seeks to discourage counterfeit items from being offered on-line.
Semiconductor firms additionally noticed massive will increase of their lobbying spending final 12 months as the federal government thought of the CHIPS and Science Act, profitable laws that gives incentives to assist develop U.S. laptop chip manufacturing.
Intel, which has pledged to spend as much as $100 billion on a chip manufacturing plant in Ohio, ramped up its lobbying spend greater than 72% in comparison with final 12 months, totaling greater than $7 million. Micron, which made an analogous pledge to construct a chip manufacturing facility in upstate New York, grew its lobbying spending by about 118% in comparison with 2021, totaling practically $4.2 million.
Crypto and fintech firms additionally noticed a marked enhance in lobbying spending in 2022, a 12 months marked by crypto scandal, although many nonetheless spend a comparatively small quantity. Coinbase resumed lobbying efforts final 12 months after a protracted hiatus, in accordance with a public database. It’s rapidly grown its operations, spending $3.4 million in 2022. The Blockchain Association, which represents quite a lot of firms within the house and has solely lobbied for a couple of years, grew its spending 111% in comparison with 2021.
Another firm that has been within the authorities’s crosshairs, TikTok proprietor ByteDance, noticed solely modest progress in spending this 12 months, up about 4% from the 12 months prior at $4.9 million. Congress efficiently handed a ban of the app on authorities units. It comes as the corporate seeks to achieve a decision with the Committee on Foreign Investment within the U.S. to proceed operations whereas mitigating the danger of its connections to a Chinese proprietor, which has raised alarms for intelligence officers and policymakers. After having its greatest lobbying quarter in Q2, topping $2 million, it dropped its spending under $1 million for the subsequent two quarters.
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