Propublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates power abuse. Sign up and receive the biggest story as soon as it’s published.
After President Donald Trump announced earlier this month that he had wiped out new tariffs, the White House has released a list of more than 1,000 products to be exempt.
One of the items that created the list was polyethylene terephthalate, more commonly known as PET resin.
It is unclear why it escaped, and even people in the industry are confused about the reasons for the reprieve.
But its inclusion is a victory for Reyes Holdings, the Coca-Cola bottler owned by the brothers, one of the nation’s largest private companies and who donated millions of dollars to Republican causes. Records show that the company recently hired a lobbying company with close ties to the Trump White House to claim tariffs.
It is unclear whether company lobbying played any role in the exemption. Reyes Holdings and their lobbyists did not respond to questions from Propublica. The White House also declined to comment, but some industry advocates say the administration has rejected its request for immunity.
The inexplained inclusion of resins in the list illustrates how opaque the administration’s process for creating tariff policies is. Key stakeholders are in the dark about why certain products face taxation. The tariff rate has been changed without a clear explanation of the changes. The administrative authorities either made a conflicting message about tariffs or refused to answer any questions at all.
This lack of transparency around the process has sparked concern among trade experts that politically connected businesses could be winning carve-outs behind closed doors.
“It could be corruption, but it could be just as easily incompetent,” the lobbyist working on tariff policy said of the inclusion of pet resin. “To be honest, this was a hurry and confused so I don’t know who went into the White House to talk to people about the list.”
During the first Trump administration there was a formal process of seeking tariff exemptions. Companies submit hundreds of thousands of applications and argue for reasons why they should avoid the product. The application was publicly available, allowing us to explore the machinery in the customs manufacturing process in more detail. This transparency allowed scholars to analyze thousands of applications afterwards to determine that political providers to Republicans are likely to be granted exemptions.
At least so far, there has been no formal application process for tariff sculpture in Trump’s second term. Industry executives and lobbyists make claims behind closed doors. Last week, the Wall Street Journal editorial board was called “process opacity” to exempt “beltway swamp dreams.”
In the executive order officially for Trump’s new tariffs, including a baseline 10% tariff in almost every country, exemptions were widely defined as products in the pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, wood, copper, key minerals and energy sectors. The accompanying list details specific products that could be spared.
However, Propublica reviews on that list found many items that didn’t fit neatly or at all in these broad categories, and some items that fell straight within the category were inevitable.
For example, the White House exclusion list included most types of asbestos, which are not generally considered important minerals and do not seem to fit into any of the exempt categories. Cancer-causing minerals, which are generally considered unimportant to national security or the US economy, are still used to make chlorine, but the Biden administration’s Environmental Protection Agency banned the import of materials last year. The Trump administration has shown that it could roll back some of these Biden-era restrictions.
A spokesman for the American Council of Chemicals, which pushed the ban back because it could hurt the chlorine industry, said the trade group was not involved in asbestos lobbying and was not able to play a role in tariff exemptions and didn’t know why it was included. (The two major chlorine companies also show no signs of lobbying against customs duties in disclosure forms.)
Other items that land on the list are far more harmless, despite not being classified into exempt categories. Among them are corals, shells and quattleborne, which are part of squid, used as dietary supplements for pets.
PET resins do not fit well into any of the exempt categories. The ingredient comes from petroleum, so the administration may have counted it as an energy product, experts said. However, other products that met the same low bar were not included.
“We are astounded as anyone,” said Ralph Vasami, executive director of the PET Plastics Association, a group of merchants in the industry. He said resins do not have applications in exempt categories unless they count the packages in which they come in.
In the same period last quarter last year, the records show that Coca-Cola bottler Reyes Holdings joined Ballard Partners to lobby tariffs. In the first quarter of this year when Trump took office, records show Ballard began lobbying the Commerce Department, which shapes trade policy around tariffs.
The company has become the destination for businesses looking for an inn with the Trump administration. In the past, Trump’s own company, Trump’s organization and its staff included senior administration officials, including Attorney General Pam Bondy and the president’s staff chief Susie Wills. Founder and Trump’s prolific fundraiser Brian Ballard was named by politics as “Trump’s most powerful lobbyist in Washington.” He was one of two lobbyists at the company who lobbyed about customs duties for Reyes’ holdings, federal disclosure records show.
The billionaire brothers behind Reyes Holdings, Chris and Jude Reyes, also have their own political ties. They have given to several Democratic candidates, but the majority of their political contributions have gone to Republican causes, campaign finance disclosures show. And after winning Trump’s first election, Chris Reyes was invited to Mar Lago to meet up with Trump personally.
Pet resin sculptures are more than just a break for Reyes Holdings. This benefits drink companies that buy resins to manufacture bottles and use them. Earlier this year, the CEO of Coca-Cola said the company will move to using more plastic bottles in the face of new tariffs on aluminum. Disclosure records show that the company has lobbyed on hill tariffs this year, but the document does not provide any particular details about which policies and the company did not respond to questions from Propublica. (Coca-Cola was about to break in with Trump, donating about $250,000 to the inauguration ceremony, and the CEO presented Trump with his favorite soda, a personalized bottle of Diet Cola.)
Another industry that appears to have lobbyed relatively well for sculptures from recent tariffs is agriculture. The exemption list includes a variety of pesticides and fertilizer ingredients.
The American Farm Bureau Federation, an agricultural lobby, praised some of these exemptions in an analysis posted on its recent website, calling the peat and potash exemptions “a fierce battle with agricultural organizations such as the American Farm Bureau Federation” and “testimony of the effectiveness of farmers and ranchers.”
If it does not fall under any of the exempt categories, but the categories are loosely defined, there are many other imports.
Idaho has given families $50 million to spend on private education. It then ended the $30 million program used by public school families.
An example is sucralose, an artificial sweetener. Its inclusion primarily supports businesses using their products in food and drinks. However, sucralose is sometimes used as it is also used in drugs. It is not clear whether the White House gave the pass under the drug exemption or for other reasons.
Even if the item is spared, the grace period may be temporary.
The broad categories exempted are industries that are primarily investigated by management for potential future tariffs under the authority to manage taxation to protect national security.
Alex Mierjeski and Agnel Philip contributed to the research.