In the days since his election as president Donald Trump won presidential raceNicole Bivens Collinson’s phone barely stopped ringing.

Collinson, who helps lead the international trade and government relations division of lobbying firm Sandler, Travis & Rosenberg, said he has responded to “dozens and dozens and dozens” of calls from worried U.S. companies seeking to protect themselves from Trump’s harsh tariff plans. loopholes and exemptions.

“Absolutely everyone is calling,” Collinson told CNBC. “Uninterrupted.”

Throughout the 2024 campaign, Trump has made universal tariffs a central tenet of his economic platform; imposed a 20 percent tax on all imports from all countries and a particularly harsh 60 percent tax on Chinese goods.

This overly protectionist approach to trade has sent shivers down the spines of economists, Wall Street analysts and industry leaders, who warn that blanket tariffs could make production, and thus consumer prices, more expensive just as we are trying to get a handle on the pandemic. -Inflation of the period is rising.

“The threat of tariffs has put retailers and many other U.S. businesses on alert,” David French, senior vice president of government relations for the National Retail Federation, told CNBC. “Our members have been working on contingency plans since President Trump secured the nomination.”

Ron Sorini, principal of lobbying firm Sorini, Samet & Associates, echoed that sentiment, noting that field companies, particularly in China, are calling at least two to three times a day with concerns about the proposed tariff increase.

″(Companies) are questioning where they should go and how to get components out (of China)? How are they going to take the entire supply chain out?” Sorini said.

When Trump released his first set China tariffs In 2018, securing immunity became the golden ticket in corporate America; this was a way for a company to maintain its China-based supply chains rather than pay the heavy price of relocation.

And to get that golden ticket, it was necessary to know the right people.

2021 research study It found that Trump’s first-term tariff exemption applications were more likely to be approved when they came from lobbying firms whose employees made political contributions to the Republican Party.

Now, with Trump poised to take back the White House in a matter of weeks, tariff hikes are becoming a more likely reality.

And in corporate America, the race is on to find the right lobbyists to help companies rub shoulders with the right people and give them an advantage in closing tariff loopholes.

“Firms are preparing,” SUNY Buffalo finance professor Veljko Fotak, one of the authors of the 2021 study, told CNBC. “The real winners of this process will be lawyers and lobbyists.”