By James V. Grimaldi and Rebecca Ballhaus
Among recent secretaries of state, Hillary Clinton was one of
the most aggressive global cheerleaders for American companies,
pushing governments to sign deals and change policies to the
advantage of corporate giants such as General Electric Co., Exxon
Mobil Corp., Microsoft Corp. and Boeing Co.
At the same time, those companies were among the many that gave
to the Clinton family's global foundation set up by her husband,
former President Bill Clinton. At least 60 companies that lobbied
the State Department during her tenure donated a total of more than
$26 million to the Clinton Foundation, according to a Wall Street
Journal analysis of public and foundation disclosures.
As Mrs. Clinton prepares to embark on a race for the presidency,
she has a web of connections to big corporations unique in American
politics--ties forged both as secretary of state and by her
family's charitable interests. Those relationships are emerging as
an issue for Mrs. Clinton's expected presidential campaign as
income disparity and other populist themes gain early
attention.
Indeed, Clinton Foundation money-raising already is drawing
attention. "To a lot of progressive Democrats, Clinton's ties to
corporate America are disturbing," says Jack Pitney, a politics
professor at Claremont McKenna College who once worked for
congressional Republicans. Mrs. Clinton's connections to companies,
he says, "are a bonanza for opposition researchers because they
enable her critics to suggest the appearance of a conflict of
interest."
The Wall Street Journal identified the companies involved with
both Clinton-family charitable endeavors and with Mrs. Clinton's
State Department by examining large corporate donations to the
Clinton Foundation, then reviewing lobbying-disclosure reports
filed by those companies. At least 44 of those 60 companies also
participated in philanthropic projects valued at $3.2 billion that
were set up though a wing of the foundation called the Clinton
Global Initiative, which coordinates the projects but receives no
cash for them.
Mrs. Clinton's connections to the companies don't end there. As
secretary of state, she created 15 public-private partnerships
coordinated by the State Department, and at least 25 companies
contributed to those partnerships. She also sought corporate
donations for another charity she co-founded, a nonprofit women's
group called Vital Voices.
Mrs. Clinton's spokesman, Nick Merrill, says: "She did the job
that every secretary of state is supposed to do and what the
American people expect of them--especially during difficult
economic times. She proudly and loudly advocated on behalf of
American business and took every opportunity she could to promote
U.S. commercial interests abroad."
Corporate donations to politically connected charities aren't
illegal so long as they aren't in exchange for favors. There is no
evidence of that with the Clinton Foundation.
In some cases, donations came after Mrs. Clinton took action
that helped a company. In other cases, the donation came first. In
some instances, donations came both before and after. All of the
companies mentioned in this article said their charitable donations
had nothing to do with their lobbying agendas with Mrs. Clinton's
State Department.
President Barack Obama's transition team worried enough about
potential problems stemming from Clinton-organization fundraising
while Mrs. Clinton was secretary of state that it asked Mr. Clinton
to quit raising money from foreign governments for the Clinton
Global Initiative and to seek approval for paid speaking
engagements, which he did. The transition team didn't put limits on
corporate fundraising.
The foundation resumed soliciting foreign governments after Mrs.
Clinton left the State Department. The official name of the
foundation was changed to the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton
Foundation. Mrs. Clinton became a director. All told, the Clinton
Foundation and its affiliates have collected donations and pledges
from all sources of more than $1.6 billion, according to their tax
returns. On Thursday, the foundation said that if Mrs. Clinton runs
for president, it would consider whether to continue accepting
foreign-government contributions as part of an internal policy
review.
"The Clinton Foundation has raised hundreds of millions that it
claims is for charitable causes, but clearly overlaps with Hillary
Clinton's political ambitions," said Tim Miller, director of
America Rising PAC, a conservative group that has targeted Mrs.
Clinton.
Foundation spokesman Craig Minassian says the group's work helps
millions around the world and its donors have a history of
supporting such work. "So when companies get involved with the
Clinton Foundation it's for only one reason, because they know our
work matters," he says.
In her book, "Hard Choices," Mrs. Clinton said one of her goals
at the State Department was "placing economics at the heart of our
foreign policy." She wrote: "It was clearer than ever that
America's economic strength and our global leadership were a
package deal."
Matthew Goodman, a former Clinton State Department official who
is now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a
Washington think tank, says Mrs. Clinton is the first secretary of
state to make economics such a focus since George C. Marshall, who
helped rebuild postwar Europe.
Economic Statecraft
That approach, which Mrs. Clinton called "economic statecraft,"
emerged in discussions with Robert Hormats, a former Goldman Sachs
Group Inc. investment banker who has worked in Democratic and
Republican administrations and became an undersecretary of state.
"One of the very first items was, how do we strengthen the role of
the State Department in economic policy?" he says.
The focus positioned Mrs. Clinton to pursue not just
foreign-policy results, but domestic economic ones.
Early in Mrs. Clinton's tenure, according to Mr. Hormats,
Microsoft's then Chief Research Officer Craig Mundie asked the
State Department to send a ranking official to a fourth annual
meeting of U.S. software executives and Chinese government
officials about piracy and Internet freedom. Mr. Hormats joined the
December 2009 meeting in Beijing.
Since 2005, Microsoft has given the Clinton Global Initiative
$1.3 million, in addition to free software, according to the
foundation.
In 2011, Microsoft launched a three-year initiative coordinated
by the Clinton Global Initiative to provide free or discounted
software and other resources to students and teachers--a commitment
Microsoft estimated to be worth $130 million.
Mr. Hormats says there was no relation between Microsoft's
donations and the State Department's participation in the China
conference.
In 2012, the Clinton Foundation approached GE about working
together to expand a health-access initiative the company had
launched four years earlier, says a GE spokeswoman.
That same year, Mrs. Clinton lobbied for GE to be selected by
the Algerian government to build power plants in that country. She
went to Algiers that October and met with President Abdelaziz
Bouteflika. "I saw an opportunity for advancing prosperity in
Algeria and seizing an opportunity for American business," she
explained in her book.
A month after Mrs. Clinton's trip, the Clinton Foundation
announced the health-initiative partnership with GE, the company's
first involvement with the foundation. GE eventually contributed
between $500,000 and $1 million to the partnership.
The following September, GE won the contracts with the Algerian
government, saying they marked "some of its largest power
agreements in company history."
Mrs. Clinton championed U.S. energy companies and launched an
office to promote overseas projects. Many of those efforts were
focused in Eastern and Central Europe, where she saw energy
development as a hedge against Russia's dominance in oil and gas.
Companies that had interests in those areas included Exxon Mobil
and Chevron Corp.
One effort, the Global Shale Gas Initiative, promoted hydraulic
fracturing, or fracking, a technique perfected by U.S. companies.
In 2010, Mrs. Clinton flew to Krakow to announce a Polish-American
cooperation on a global shale-gas initiative, according to her
book. At the time, the U.S. Energy Information Administration
predicted abundant deposits of shale gas in Poland.
After pursuing shale-gas projects in Poland, Exxon Mobil gave up
a few years later, and Chevron said late last month it would
abandon its Poland project.
In 2012, Mrs. Clinton flew to Sofia, Bulgaria, and urged the
Bulgarian Parliament to reconsider its moratorium on fracking and
its withdrawal of Chevron's five-year exploration license. A few
months later, the government allowed conventional gas exploration,
but not fracking. Chevron left Bulgaria in 2012.
Ben Schreiber of the environmental group Friends of the Earth
says: "We've long been concerned about the ties that Hillary
Clinton has to the oil-and-gas industry."
Both Exxon and Chevron are supporters of the Clinton Foundation.
Chevron donated $250,000 in 2013. A Chevron spokesman said the
Clinton charity "is one of many programs and partnerships that the
company has had or maintains across a number of issue areas and
topics pertinent to our business."
Exxon Mobil has given about $2 million to the Clinton Global
Initiative, starting in 2009. Since 2007, Exxon Mobil also has
given $16.8 million to Vital Voices, the nonprofit women's group
co-founded by Mrs. Clinton, according to the group's
spokeswoman.
An Exxon Mobil spokesman said the donations were made to support
work on issues Exxon Mobil has long championed, such as programs to
fight malaria and empower women. "That is the sole motivation for
our support of charitable programs associated with the Clintons,"
he said. "We did not seek or receive any special consideration on
the Shale Gas Initiative."
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In October 2009, Mrs. Clinton went to bat for aerospace giant
Boeing, which was seeking to sell jets to Russia, by flying to
Moscow to visit the Boeing Design Center. "I made the case that
Boeing's jets set the global gold standard, and, after I left, our
embassy kept at it," she wrote in her book.
About seven months later, in June 2010, Russia agreed to
purchase 50 Boeing 737s for $3.7 billion, choosing Boeing over
Europe's Airbus Group NV.
Two months later, Boeing made its first donation to the Clinton
Foundation--$900,000 to help rebuild Haiti's public-education
system. Overall, Boeing has contributed around $1.1 million to the
Clinton Foundation since 2010.
A Boeing spokeswoman said it is routine for U.S. officials to
advocate on behalf of businesses such as Boeing. "U.S. businesses
face fierce global competition, and oftentimes an unlevel playing
field in the global marketplace," she said in a written statement.
"Secretary Clinton did nothing for Boeing that former U.S.
presidents and cabinet secretaries haven't done for decades, or
that their foreign counterparts haven't done on behalf of companies
like Airbus."
Before every overseas trip, says Mr. Hormats, the former
undersecretary of state, he helped prepare a list of U.S. corporate
interests for Mrs. Clinton to advocate while abroad.
During Mrs. Clinton's three trips to India, she urged the
government to kill a ban on stores that sell multiple brands, a law
aimed at department stores or big-box retailers such as Wal-Mart
Stores Inc.
"It wasn't just Wal-Mart," Mr. Hormats says. "It was the whole
point of multibrand retail. Wal-Mart was, of course, the
biggest."
Mrs. Clinton served on the board of the Bentonville, Ark.-based
retailer between 1986 and 1992, when her husband was governor of
that state, and the law firm she worked for at the time represented
the company. Wal-Mart has donated nearly $1.2 million to the
Clinton Foundation for a program that issues grants to student-run
charitable projects. The company also has paid more than $370,000
in membership fees to the foundation since 2008, according to a
Wal-Mart spokesman.
Trip to India
Before Mrs. Clinton's official trip to India in 2012, Wal-Mart
Chief Executive Mike Duke joined her at the Summit of the Americas
in Cartagena, Colombia, to pledge $12 million to help women in
Latin America. The donation included $1.5 million in grants to
55,000 women entrepreneurs through the International Fund for Women
and Girls, one of the 15 public-private partnerships Mrs. Clinton
created at the State Department, and $500,000 for Vital Voices, the
charity she co-founded.
"We committed to helping women around the world live better,"
Mr. Duke said at the time. "By working with leaders like Secretary
Clinton, we're bringing that mission to life."
One month later, Mrs. Clinton traveled to India to make the case
against the ban on retail stores such as Wal-Mart. Then-Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh had proposed allowing companies such as
Wal-Mart to invest up to 51% directly in local multibrand
retailers, but one of his allies, Mamata Banerjee, a regional
governor, opposed the idea. Ms. Banerjee's support was key to Mr.
Singh's majority in Parliament.
Mrs. Clinton met with Ms. Banerjee to press the matter. She also
said in a speech in West Bengal that U.S. retailers could bring an
"enormous amount of expertise" to India in areas ranging from
supply-chain management to working with small producers and
farmers. Her lobbying was unsuccessful.
A Wal-Mart spokesman said the retailer had lobbied the State
Department on the issue, which he said was one of dozens of topics
important to the business.
After Mrs. Clinton's India trip, her husband asked Mr. Duke,
Walmart's CEO, to change his schedule to appear at the opening
panel of the Clinton Global Initiative. Mr. Duke agreed.
Write to Rebecca Ballhaus at Rebecca.Ballhaus@wsj.com
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