A Quiet Break for Corporations

"Removing these tariffs will help reduce costs for American businesses," House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas (R-Calif.) said in a statement in March, when the House passed an omnibus bill with hundreds of tariff suspensions. "This is absolutely the right thing to do."

The practice of not naming companies in the legislation obscures a fact revealed by The Post's analysis: The biggest beneficiaries of the rising tide of tariff-suspension bills are domestic subsidiaries of foreign corporations. Of the 10 companies that stand to benefit from the greatest number of bills examined in the study, eight are owned by or affiliated with German and Swiss chemical companies.

Companies linked to Bayer and Lanxess, for example, initiated more than 100 bills in the current session of Congress, records show. If passed, over the next two years the bills could cost the U.S. Treasury more than $44 million.

The Post's findings come at a time when pork-barrel spending in the form of congressional earmarks is drawing increasing criticism from the public -- and occasional attention from federal prosecutors. Meanwhile, tax breaks delivered to corporations in the form of tariff suspensions have gone largely without public notice.

The current session of Congress is on track to enact a record number of suspensions, the Post analysis found. Since the beginning of last year, legislators have introduced more than 1,400 bills seeking new or renewed tariff waivers or reductions.

"It's a huge number," said John Deming, a lobbyist for Ciba Specialty Chemicals, which the analysis shows has initiated more than 30 tariff-suspension bills in the past two years. "The chemical industry has always been doing this, and now other people are doing it. It's amazing this time, everybody understands how this works now."

Although suspensions are supposed to be shelved if competitors object, trade officials acknowledge that some smaller companies may never hear about the proposals.

"I was shocked when I saw how many there are, and I wondered how you could possibly keep abreast of what's proposed," said Kelly, the chemical executive.

Congress's Tip Sheet

Tariffs have been around since the earliest years of the republic -- they funded the government long before income taxes. In the 19th century, legislators began using them increasingly to protect domestic businesses from cheap imports.

Tariff suspensions have a long history, too. Traditionally each suspension was introduced as a separate bill. Their popularity leapt 20 years ago when Congress decided to combine most of the unopposed suspension bills into one huge piece of legislation, to be passed quickly and unanimously at the end of each session. Today corporate lobbyists deliver a steady stream of proposed tariff suspensions to congressional aides, who use computer spreadsheets to track the avalanche of paperwork.

The last time Congress passed an omnibus bill, in 2004, budget analysts estimated that the waivers would result in at least $172 million in lost revenue. The next set of suspensions, slated for passage this fall, is looking much more costly.

Budget analysts estimate that the grab bag of tariff suspensions passed by the House in March, if approved by the Senate and signed into law, would cost taxpayers $278 million. Last month, in an unusual move, the Senate attached 262 of the suspensions to a pension bill. The rest, with an unknown number of the Senate's own proposals, are expected to be rolled into a miscellaneous tariff bill this month.