Trump Wants an Airline Lobbyist to Be Transportation Chief
Donald Trump’s pick to head the Department of Transportation, Sean Duffy, is a former airline industry lobbyist who has voted to make it harder to impose safety regulations on airlines. The industry is already celebrating his nomination.
A Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 8 airplane taxiing at LaGuardia Airport in Queens, New York, on November 12, 2024. (Nicolas Economou / NurPhoto via Getty Images)
President-elect Donald Trump just selected a former reality TV star and Fox News host to serve as transportation secretary in his incoming administration — a choice that, at first glance, may seem to have little to do with airlines or highways.
But Sean Duffy’s appointment would be a major boon to the airline industry’s efforts to slash regulation and swindle consumers. During his stint as a lobbyist with a Washington, DC, consulting firm, Duffy worked on behalf of a coalition of airline companies pushing to limit foreign airlines’ expansion in the United States.
And as a Republican congressman for Wisconsin before this, Duffy cast a vote in favor of a closely contested provision in an aviation spending bill that opponents — including famed pilot Chesley Sullenberger — argued was designed to make it far harder for federal regulators to strengthen airline safety standards.
Duffy has also previously lobbied the Transportation Department for oil and gas interests and auto manufacturers, both groups that have fought Transportation Department regulation on everything from greenhouse gas emissions in the nation’s most polluting sector to pipeline safety.
If confirmed, Duffy will take the helm of an agency charged with regulating airlines that fight tooth and nail against consumer protections, overseeing safety concerns at airplane manufacturers like Boeing, and monitoring disaster-prone rail giants. Already transportation trade groups are celebrating his nomination.
“We are thrilled that President-elect Trump has chosen Congressman Duffy to lead the Department of Transportation,” Nicholas Calio, president and CEO of Airlines For America, the airlines’ biggest lobbying group, said in a statement on November 18. “Congressman Duffy has a proven track record for getting things done, and we are eager to collaborate with him on key issues impacting the U.S. airline industry.”
Duffy’s background has advocates for airline accountability and pro-consumer transportation policy concerned about where his loyalties will lie, should he be confirmed as secretary.
“His most significant transportation experience is lobbying on behalf of the largest airlines,” said Bill McGee, a senior fellow for aviation and travel at the American Economic Liberties Project, an antitrust-focused advocacy group. “There are grave concerns here.”
“We Have an Oligopoly”
Duffy’s first brush with fame came as an ESPN commentator and sporadic reality TV star in the late 1990s and early 2000s, appearing on the MTV shows Real World and Road Rules. But by 2002, he had entered politics, serving as a district attorney in Wisconsin and, in 2010, winning election to the US House of Representatives, representing a mostly rural Wisconsin district.
In the spring of 2012, shortly after Duffy took office, a GOP-controlled House was deliberating on a must-pass aviation spending bill. Negotiations had dragged on for years.
At the final hour, Rep. Bill Shuster (R-PA) tried to add a far-reaching amendment to the bill that would have curtailed the Federal Aviation Administration’s authority to impose safety measures on the aviation industry — forcing regulators to justify the cost of any safety regulations to industry.
“That was one of the worst pieces of aviation legislation that I’ve ever seen,” recalled McGee, who followed the debate over the bill at the time. “It was just nightmarish.”
Even with a significant Republican majority in the House at the time, the vote on the amendment was extremely close. Duffy voted in favor, voting records show, and the measure passed by a margin of just six votes.
While the amendment was ultimately excised from the final bill, McGee said Duffy’s vote deserved close scrutiny.
“Anyone who voted for that or supported that — we need to look at that very closely and ask why,” said McGee.
“I think it represents a giant step backward in terms of aviation safety,” said famed pilot Chesley Sullenberger in an interview with press at the time. Sullenberger, who piloted the lifesaving “Miracle on the Hudson” flight and has since championed aviation safety issues, explained that this legislation created “a huge obstacle to new regulations.”
Sullenberger said the amendment was “a giant step backward in terms of aviation safety,” warning that if it became law, “at some point in the future, we don’t know when, it’s likely people will die unnecessarily.”
Duffy’s vote on the safety measures appears emblematic of his close alliance with the airlines and other corporate interests. Following his time in Congress, Duffy went to work as a lobbyist, representing the very industries that he will soon be overseeing if he’s confirmed as transportation secretary.
Duffy retired from Congress in 2019, but remained in Washington to work with the lobbying firm BGR Group as the cohead of their financial services lobbying wing.
While at BGR Group, Duffy worked as a lobbyist for some of the nation’s biggest airlines. In 2020, he worked on behalf of the Partnership for Open and Fair Skies, a coalition of airlines including American Airlines, Delta, and United.
At the time, the partnership, which also included airline unions, was fighting subsidies received by the airlines’ foreign rivals. Considering that a handful of airlines control 80 percent of the US market, the fact that Duffy worked on behalf of the biggest airlines is a major concern, said McGee.
“The fact is that in this market, we have an oligopoly,” he said. “And the people that Mr Duffy represented as a lobbyist — they are that oligopoly.”
Duffy has also lobbied on behalf of auto manufacturers and fossil fuel interests — both realms that the Transportation Department oversees. Duffy lobbied for Polaris, an auto manufacturer, from 2019 to 2023. He also worked on behalf of Enterprise Products, a Texas-based natural gas and oil pipeline company.
Disclosures show that Duffy was lobbying the Transportation Department on behalf of Enterprise Products.
Duffy also directly lobbied on behalf of software company SAS Institute, the now-defunct blockchain company Diem Networks, and financial firms like S&P Global and Gramercy Funds Management LLC, among others.
While he hasn’t registered any lobbying since 2023 and now works primarily as a host on the Fox News program The Bottom Line offering commentary on business and politics issues, Duffy continues to serve on BGR’s advisory board.
Last year, Duffy appeared on Fox News to openly criticize current transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg’s investigation into Southwest Airlines following the 2023 holiday travel meltdown that left more than a million people stranded. Instead, Duffy called for more deregulation of the industry that he could soon oversee.
“Southwest will fix this,” he told the host. “Pete Buttigieg never will.”