BUSINESS/CANADA/LOBBYING/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Barry Zekelman, a Canadian billionaire whose business is mostly in the United States, is not a guy who likes to lose — or go slow. On days off, he likes to race his Ferrari 488 sports cars. Or he might climb aboard his Gulfstream IV jet to fly to the Bahamas to visit his 121-foot superyacht, which he named ‘Man of Steel’ in a nod to his role as chief executive of Zekelman Industries, North America’s largest steel-tube manufacturer. So when Mr. Zekelman saw a chance to address his greatest frustration — a flood of cheap steel tube imports into the United States that was undermining sales at his family-owned, Chicago-based company — he went all out to win in another intensely competitive arena: influencing policy in Washington. He called on well-placed connections, including a lawyer who had done work for him and had gone on to a senior position helping oversee trade policy in the Trump administration. He put his Washington-based lobbyist into action, and his company took a high-profile role with a trade group that was backing his cause. He funded his own advertising campaign to build public support for his efforts to protect makers of steel tube in the United States.”
–Eric Lipton, “He’s One of the Biggest Backers of Trump’s Push to Protect American Steel. And He’s Canadian.,” The New York Times online, May 20, 2019