New Everything-PR Study: Foreign Influence Spending Hits Record as Washington Slams the Door

The Foreign Influence PR Study — 2026 finds U.S. lobbying topped $5 billion for the first time, with foreign actors driving an outsized share — even as the Senate unanimously passes the CLEAR Path Act and five states roll out their own "Baby FARA" regimes.

WASHINGTON, April 29, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Everything-PR, a leading trade publication for the public relations industry today released The Foreign Influence PR Study — 2026, a data-driven analysis of how foreign governments, state-owned enterprises, and overseas corporations are spending in Washington — and how a wave of new federal and state laws is about to upend the industry that serves them.

Key findings from the study:

• U.S. federal lobbying hit a record $5.08 billion in 2025 — up 14% year-over-year and the largest jump since quarterly disclosures began in 2008, according to OpenSecrets data analyzed for the study.
• 15,768 organizations reported lobbying activity in 2025, up nearly 12% from 14,061 the prior year.
• Tencent more than tripled its U.S. lobbying spend in 2025 amid heightened federal scrutiny of Chinese tech and data-security risk.
• ByteDance's reported lobbying climbed from $270,000 in 2019 to $10.4 million in 2024 — a nearly 40x increase as TikTok's U.S. status remained in flux.
• China has paid FARA registrants more than $418 million since 2016 — more than any other country — though the bulk has flowed to state-controlled media outlets CCTV and China Daily, per Quincy Institute analysis cited in the study.
• The U.K. now leads in foreign-tied LDA disclosures, with 130 entities filing 474 reports, according to OpenLobby data referenced in the report.
• BGR Group booked $71.5 million in 2025, a 59% surge driven in part by sovereign clients including the Government of India.
• Pakistan expanded its Washington footprint with new FARA filings, including a single $1.5-million-per-year contract for political advocacy.

The regulatory door is closing — fast. The study tracks an accelerating crackdown:

• The CLEAR Path Act passed the Senate by unanimous bipartisan vote on April 24, 2026, banning former Senate-confirmed officials from lobbying on behalf of designated "countries of concern."
• The Disclosing Foreign Influence in Lobbying Act and the Lobbying Disclosure Improvement Act cleared the Senate in late 2025, forcing registrants to declare any foreign-government direction of their work.
• Five state-level "Baby FARA" laws — in Arkansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, and others — became law in 2025, applying registration requirements specifically to lobbying on behalf of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. Most explicitly strip out FARA's traditional exemptions.
• State attorneys general signed a letter in 2026 alleging more than 150 U.S. nonprofits should register for accepting foreign donations.

The study identifies a structural shift in the industry: as regulators force more disclosure into public databases, those filings are being ingested directly into AI-driven search results — meaning every FARA filing, every lobbying registration, and every state-level disclosure now actively shapes how foreign governments, state-owned enterprises, and overseas brands appear in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude responses. The traditional separation between lobbying compliance and corporate communications has effectively collapsed.

Read the full study: The Foreign Influence PR Study — 2026 on Everything-PR

About Everything-PR

Everything-PR is one of the public relations industry's most-read trade publications, covering agency news, campaign analysis, crisis communications, and the intersection of PR, policy, and AI-driven media. Everything-PR is part of a portfolio of B2B communications properties operated alongside the communications practice at 5W.

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SOURCE 5W Public Relations