QatarEnergy, the energy company owned by the government of Qatar, pressed major American agricultural and chemical trade groups to lobby the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative on Doha’s behalf, according to an investigation published this week by The Daily Wire. The requests centered on tariff exemptions for urea and ammonia, fertilizer inputs Qatar exports in enormous volume each year. The trade office ultimately granted ammonia the exemption Qatar had asked for.

The approach routed around a disclosure requirement Congress built for exactly this situation. Lobbyists working for a foreign principal must register with the Justice Department and file public reports naming their client, their contacts and their objectives. By asking American associations to carry the ask instead, QatarEnergy kept its own role out of the record while federal officials weighed the tariff.

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From the Daily Wire: 

Typically, any person or group lobbying on behalf of a foreign entity must register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) and disclose when, who, and how it is lobbying. However, by lobbying U.S.-based non-governmental entities, and asking those groups to make the asks on their behalf, Qatar can muddy that process.

When the FARA-registered Texas branch of QatarEnergy contacted these trade groups to lobby the federal government on Doha’s behalf, it did not identify itself as a registered agent.

The American Soybean Association did not tell the government that QatarEnergy asked the association to petition the government on Qatar’s behalf.

The Foreign Agents Registration Act dates to 1938, when Congress moved to force Nazi propaganda agents operating in the United States into the open. It has always rested on a simple premise: when a foreign government pays to shape American policy, the American people get to see it. QatarEnergy’s own filing paints a picture of an entity that is not a private firm doing business abroad. Its board is appointed by the Emir of Qatar and answers to the Supreme Council for Economic Affairs and Investment and to the Council of Ministers. Its chief executive, Saad Sherida Al-Kaabi, simultaneously serves as the country’s minister of state for energy affairs, and other board members hold senior government posts as well.

According to the investigation, the letters reached the American Soybean Association, the American Chemistry Council, the American Farm Bureau Federation and the National Corn Growers Association. The soybean association then wrote to the federal government seeking the exemption for the fertilizer inputs, citing Qatar as an important partner to its members, without mentioning who had prompted the request. In a statement, the association said its position on tariff exemptions for critical agricultural inputs had not changed because of correspondence with outside companies. QatarEnergy’s filings redacted the association’s reply, and a June 24 email from the company’s Marcus Lee thanked the association’s top government affairs official for its support on recent tariff matters. The Farm Bureau and the corn growers did not specifically seek a Gulf-based or Qatar-based carve-out.

The trade office did not say whether it knew Qatar had approached the groups, or whether that knowledge would have altered its decision. The investigation also noted that the associations likely would have made the requests regardless, and that several other countries petitioned the trade office too. The pattern fits a wider footprint. Qatar has poured billions into American university campuses, including Texas A&M, Georgetown, Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, Northwestern and Virginia Commonwealth, hosts the largest U.S. military presence in the region at Al Udeid Air Base, and funds Al Jazeera, the satellite network whose American editorial voice has drawn sustained scrutiny.

What this story exposes is not one exemption for one chemical but a habit: foreign governments learning that the cheapest way into American policy runs through American letterhead, American trade associations and American farmers who never learn whose interests they are carrying, while the lobbyist who skips the registration line wins by default. So let’s pray that the officials at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and across the executive branch would demand to know who is really asking before they sign; that the leaders of America’s farm organizations would guard the trust their members place in them and disclose when a foreign state comes calling; that members of Congress overseeing FARA enforcement would close the gaps rather than look past them; for American farmers who simply want fair prices and honest rules; and for the people of Qatar, that they would come to know the God who weighs the heart rather than merely the ledger.

How are you praying about this issue? Share your prayers and scriptures in the comments below.

(Excerpt from the Daily Wire. Photo Credit: Dane Hillard – originally uploaded to Flickr as Islamic Center of America, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8493981).