Lobbying America

Remapping Debate

March 26, 2014 — Benjamin Waterhouse is an assistant professor of History at the University of North Carolina and the author of the new book, “Lobbying America: The Politics of Business from Nixon to NAFTA.” Waterhouse follows the role that business associations — particularly the Business Roundtable, the US Chamber of Commerce, and the National Association of Manufacturers — played in the conservative drift in American politics since the early 1970s. In the conversation, Waterhouse discusses how business changed the tenor of political discourse (and fought off Ralph Nader and “consumerists”). He also rejects the notion that theU.S. doesn’t have an “industrial policy” — it’s just an industrial policy that has favored large firms through policies like NAFTA.