Inside the new rules of Washington.

Due to the political climate, industry leaders are being encouraged to rethink advocacy in a Washington defined by gridlock, tariffs, and shifting priorities.

Brian Wild has spent more than 30 years inside the machinery of American government—first in the Senate, then in the House, then in the office of Vice President Dick Cheney, and finally in the office of Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives John Boehner. He knows where the bodies are buried, which deals get cut, and why the people who cut them usually lose their seats.

When Wild stepped to the podium at the Clean Advocacy Summit on Monday, March 23, in Washington, D.C., he wasn’t there to offer reassurance. He was there to tell the truth.

“There has never been so much happening on so many fronts all at the same time,” began Wild, who now serves as Chief Government Relations Officer for the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors (NAW). “Normally, the way D.C. works is we take on one issue, we talk about it ad nauseam, and then we move on. This is five to six issues a day.”

His keynote address to cleaning industry advocates gathered for ISSA’s annual Hike the Hill Day touched on congressional dysfunction, the rising power of the executive branch, tariffs, extended producer responsibility, workforce pressures, and what he called an unprecedented convergence of Republican and Democratic priorities. It was a lot to absorb before lunch. But Wild’s message, beneath the complexity, was consistent: Understand the environment you’re operating in, then tell your story anyway.

Congress isn’t doing its job—and that’s your problem

Wild opened with numbers that were, by his own description, depressing. In a typical two-year Congress, roughly 350 bills per year make it to the president’s desk for signature. Last year, Congress passed 19.

“When Congress doesn’t send that legislation to the president’s desk, the president gets to make that decision on his own,” Wild said. The consequence is an executive branch operating at a scale of authority that he compared to wartime. President Trump set a new record for executive orders in his first 100 days—a pace Wild noted is matched only by President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) during the New Deal and World War II.

Wild also flagged what he sees as a more troubling trend: the growing use of national emergency declarations to bypass Congress entirely. Tariffs, immigration enforcement, and expanded U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) authority have all been enacted through emergency powers originally designed for hurricanes and floods. “This is an expansive amount of authority,” he explained, “and it’s probably something the next president will do, too. Every time a president does something, it’s really setting a precedent.”

The judiciary branch, meanwhile, is filling the vacuum Congress has vacated. Wild walked through a roster of Supreme Court cases already on the docket for this term—birthright citizenship, the independence of the Federal Reserve, impoundment authority, tariff legality—each one a potential landmark. “Almost all of these are challenging precedents that Trump is trying to set,” he claimed.

Tariffs: here to stay

For distributors in the cleaning and jansan space, tariffs may be the most immediate pressure point, and Wild was direct about the outlook. “You’re going to live in a tariff regime for the next, at least, decade,” he cautioned.

His reasoning was partly about policy but mostly about money. When the president rolled out sweeping tariffs on April 2 of last year, the stated rationale was to leverage trade negotiations. By the time of the State of the Union address a few weeks ago, that framing had shifted. “The tone really became: We need the revenue,” Wild said. With national debt having crossed $37 trillion and the cost of servicing that debt now exceeding the entire defense budget, tariffs have become less a bargaining chip and more a revenue stream—one no future administration is likely to abandon.

Wild also addressed the status of tariff refunds for companies that paid duties on goods ultimately covered by exclusions. The process, he admitted, is “pretty ugly.” Refunds are supposed to flow through Customs and Border Protection, but the administration has been slow-walking the process. His practical advice: if your company paid the duty directly, file in the Court of International Trade now. If you were downstream and the duty was passed to you from a manufacturer, start that conversation immediately. “Legally, it’s only the duty payer that is going to get a refund,” he clarified, “unless Congress passes a law—and as you saw, they don’t do that.”

Two parties, one playbook

One of Wild’s more provocative arguments was that the partisan divide most advocates assume they’re navigating is narrower than it appears. On the issues that matter most to the distribution and wholesale sector, he said, Republicans and Democrats are increasingly singing from the same sheet.

“I actually think Republicans and Democrats have more in common today than they have ever had since I’ve been in Washington, D.C.,” Wild maintained. “It is more of a tone and tenor that separates them, but from a business issue standpoint, they’re all singing from the same song sheet.”

His evidence: The steel and aluminum tariffs put in place by Trump in his first term were continued and expanded by Biden, then continued and expanded again by Trump. Protectionism isn’t a partisan position anymore—it’s a consensus. Isolationism, skepticism of free trade, and hostility toward large corporations are attitudes now shared across the aisle. A Gallup poll Wild cited showed that only 37% of Americans view big business favorably, and support for capitalism has been falling steadily since the 1960s.

Equally striking: Polling data from self-identified triple-Trump voters—people who voted for the former president in every available election—showed that 83% said corporations make too much profit, and 87% said the U.S. economic system unfairly favors powerful interests. “These are Republican folks,” Wild affirmed. “This populism thing is really uniting.”

The practical implication for advocates, he said, is a shift in how they should frame their visits. “Members of Congress no longer really care that you’re an employer,” Wild conceded. “They want to know what your workers are doing, how you pay your workers, how you train your workers, how you hire your workers.” Being pro-worker is the price of entry in today’s Capitol Hill, regardless of which party controls the committee room.

Extended producer responsibility: a tax by another name

Wild reserved some of his sharpest commentary for extended producer responsibility—the EPR packaging laws now in force in Oregon, California, and Colorado, and spreading into other states. He called it, simply, a tax.

“It is nothing more than a tax,” he said. “In particular, it is a tax on people from outside their state, which makes it even more attractive to politicians.”

He walked through Oregon’s model in detail: every layer of packaging on a product—the product wrapper, the box, the pallet, the shrink wrap, the nylon straps—is taxed separately based on an algorithm developed by a nonprofit called the Circular Action Alliance. That nonprofit, Wild noted, is funded and controlled by the world’s largest consumer brands, giving them advance knowledge of the tax structure that other businesses don’t have. “They know what the algorithm is. They created the algorithm that taxes you. And so, they already know ahead of time, and you don’t.”

NAW is currently suing. The legal theory rests on the Commerce Clause—Wild argues that EPR functions as a toll on interstate commerce—as well as the unlawful delegation of taxation authority to a private third party. A federal judge has signaled sympathy with NAW’s claims, and a trial is pending. NAW members have injunctive relief in the meantime.

Wild warned that the EPR model is contagious. States that need revenue and lack balanced-budget flexibility are watching Oregon and California closely. And the third-party administration structure—essentially outsourcing tax collection to a private nonprofit—is a template that could be applied to almost any product category. “I think this is a plagiarism model that can be used for a whole host of other things,” Wild said.

Tell your story—and bring D.C. to your door

For all the structural headwinds Wild described, his closing message was optimistic in a practical way. He noted that, out of the 19 bills Congress managed to pass last year, ISSA members could claim credit for at least four. “That’s pretty darn good!” he exclaimed.

The key, he argued, is not just coming to Washington—it’s getting Washington to come to you. Lawmakers who have walked through a distributor’s warehouse, met the forklift operator, and heard about the Little League sponsorship are lawmakers who understand the difference between the cleaning and jansan supply chain and a faceless fulfillment center. “When you all walk into your warehouse, you know the forklift operator’s name, probably know their spouse’s name, probably know their kids’ names, and probably hired three of their relatives. Tell that story,” Wild said.

He also urged advocates not to lead with the size of their companies. In an era when only 14% of the public holds big business in high regard and small businesses enjoy a 65% approval rating—higher than the military—framing matters. “My advice is don’t present yourself as a big business, even if you are,” Wild said.

The political environment may be volatile, the legislative calendar may be nearly empty, and the president’s emergency powers may be expanding into territory the Constitution’s framers never envisioned. But Wild’s read on all of it was characteristically unsentimental: The people who show up, build relationships, and make their case in human terms are the people who eventually move the needle. Everything else is just noise.

Want to get engaged with advocacy for the cleaning and facility solutions industry? Contact ISSA’s John Nothdurft, [email protected], and/or Stacy Seiden, [email protected], to learn how.