Dive Brief:

• The National Retail Federation's CEO Matthew Shay and several retail CEOs on the NRF Executive Committee, including Christopher Baldwin, BJ's Wholesale Club CEO and chairman of the NRF Board of Directors, met with President Donald Trump and other senior administration officials at the White House Wednesday. An NRF spokesperson could not disclose who specifically was in attendance.

• During the meeting, which was prompted because the NRF's Board of Directors are in town, the executives discussed regulatory and tax reform, the state of the economy and other issues, according to a press release.

• While tariffs apparently were not discussed, Bloomberg reports, the meeting comes less than a week after Shay decried the President's tit-for-tat tariffs with China, saying, "This is what a trade war looks like, and what we have warned against from the start. We are on a dangerous downward spiral and American families will be on the losing end." 

Dive Insight:

This meeting is one of just a few that retail CEOs have had with Trump since he took office. CEOs from Best Buy, Target, Gap and other retailers met with the President last February to express concerns over the then proposed border adjustment tax. This time around, executives took the opportunity to "tell the President how the important work he has done on tax reform and deregulation is benefiting the retail industry, our workers and American consumers," Shay said in a statement.

With the new tax bill out of the way — something industry leaders have been working toward for decades — retailers can redirect their attention to lobbying the administration and Congress on several other issues. While the NRF did not disclose to Retail Dive many details regarding the conversation, a spokesperson told Bloomberg that tariffs were not talked about "because it was a pre-arranged meeting about the impact of the tax overhaul and deregulation," according to the report.

But tariffs are certainly top of mind for the trade group. Last week, escalating trade tensions led Trump to consider an additional $100 billion in tariffs after China's Ministry of Commerce responded with its own tariffs on U.S. products like soybeans, aircrafts and automobiles. The tariffs on Chinese products, however, notably spared apparel, footwear and other consumer goods. Trade groups like the NRF and the Retail Industry Leaders Association both raised concerns over "the unintended consequences of protectionist trade policies," as Shay put it.

The NRF is a part of a recently formed coalition banding together executives from the retail, manufacturing, agriculture and tech industries to lobby against Trump's proposed tariffs. That coalition sent Trump a letter on March 18 stating their opposition and had a meeting at the NRF on April 6, Bloomberg reports.