Days before President Donald Trump was set to take his oath of office, the lobbying outfit many insiders view as a direct line to Trump filed paperwork to represent a corporation partially owned by the Chinese government.
Ballard Partners, a firm headed by veteran lobbyist and Trump ally Brian Ballard, registered to lobby on behalf of Pirelli Tire effective December 2024, public records released on Jan. 17 show. Pirelli Tire, though based in Italy, counts the state-owned China National Chemical Corporation as its single largest shareholder, positioning the Chinese government to profit from the arrangement. In addition to being state-owned, China National Chemical Corporation also appears on the Department of Defense’s 1260h entity list, meaning that it is “directly or indirectly owned, controlled, or beneficially owned by” the Chinese military or that it is a “military-civil fusion contributor to the Chinese defense industrial base.”
China National Chemical Corporation holds a 37% stake in Pirelli, according to lobbying disclosures. In addition to the state-owned chemical conglomerate’s ownership share, the BBC reported in June 2023 that the Chinese government’s Silk Road investment fund owns a further 9% stake in Pirelli. Ballard Partners has registered to represent the Italian tire company on “issues regarding trade/tariffs.”
Trump was responsible for the United States’s initial designation of China National Chemical Corporation, with his DOD accusing the company of having People’s Liberation Army ties in August 2020. The president took his concern a step further in November of that year by issuing an executive order barring American businesses and individuals from owning shares in entities designated as Chinese military companies by the Pentagon. Sinochem, the state-owned corporation that acquired China National Chemical Corporation in 2021, manufactures chemical products for military and civilian uses while prominently displaying a hammer and sickle on the front page of its website.
“Pirelli Tire is subject to Italy’s ‘Golden Power’ rules, which in this instance limits Cinochem’s role in Pirelli,” a Ballard Partners spokesperson told the Washington Examiner. “Cinochem is a silent partner with no decision-making power, board influence, or any influence on the leadership, decision-making, and operations of the company. We will work with any company where such restrictions apply or that seeks to free itself of control or ownership from state-owned Chinese companies.”
The firm is assigning Hunter Morgen to work on Pirelli’s behalf. Morgen, a partner at the firm, is a veteran of the first Trump administration, in which he served as a special assistant to the president and as a senior adviser for policy, working closely with Peter Navarro and Stephen Miller, two men who have secured prominent roles in the new Trump administration. Navarro specifically will be serving as a trade adviser, providing an opening for Morgen to advocate Pirelli.
The appointment of a Trump insider to aid a firm partially owned by the Chinese government is illustrative of Ballard Partners’s extensive links to Trumpworld. In addition to retaining numerous former high-level Republican aides as employees, Ballard Partners alumni are set to occupy top spots in the Trump administration with Susie Wiles named the president’s chief of staff and former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi securing the nomination for U.S. attorney general. Brian Ballard, the firm’s president, has a roughly three-decade-long relationship with Trump, working as a lobbyist for the Trump Organization long before the 2016 presidential election. Ballard was one of the top fundraisers for Trump’s first campaign, in which he served as a top-level staffer.
Corporate America appears to buy into the idea that Ballard Partners has significant sway over Trump, with players such as Google, Amazon, Blackstone, the NBA, and Boeing, among many others, turning to the firm for representation.
Pirelli is not Ballard Partners’s first client with links to the Chinese government. The firm, in 2018, agreed to lobby on behalf of REC Americas, which is fully owned by China National Bluestar, a wholly owned subsidiary of the state-owned chemical company Sinochem. Former Rep. Matt Gaetz’s former chief of staff was deployed to aid the Chinese-controlled solar energy company in the area of trade. Years later, in December 2023, the firm filed paperwork to represent iGas USA, a Florida-based refrigerant company that Zhejiang Juhua, a Chinese government-endorsed chemical manufacturer, held a 34% stake in.
Ballard Partners also represents the government of Turkey, per its website.
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Most recently, Ballard Partners made waves by agreeing to represent TikTok in September 2024, a Chinese-owned social media platform that congressional China hawks targeted over concerns that it may hand over American data to the Chinese Communist Party. Trump recently bucked these hawks by working with TikTok to restore its service in the U.S. after legislation banning it went into effect.
China hawks have tried to incentivize lobbyists to stop working with Chinese military companies, with mixed results. A provision in the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act, for instance, will bar defense contractors from doing business with any lobbying firm representing Pentagon-designated Chinese military companies when it takes effect in June 2026. Congressional offices have also threatened to blacklist lobbyists working with firms linked to the Chinese armed forces.
