Coalitions play a critical role in the policymaking arena and are a great way to build or enhance an advocacy network and use the resources of a number of groups to jointly advance a policy goal. By expanding the number of voices and influence, NACS has worked with a wide range of stakeholders and influencers over the years to make its advocacy more effective. One of the earliest coalition efforts at NACS was related to increasing daylight saving time (DST) in 1986. NACS was part of a broad group, including retail, sports and outdoor groups, advocating for maximizing daylight hours. In 2005, NACS again was key player in the group expanding DST.
NACS has strategically created, led and participated in a wide range of coalitions on many of the issues important to the convenience and fuel retailing industry ranging from fuel to food, swipe fees to supply chain issues, labor to lotteries, privacy to patent reform, and tax to antitrust issues. The NACS government relations team continually identifies issues and like-minded organizations to help advance our legislative priorities and determine the necessary level of engagement. Sometimes NACS creates coalitions or alliances as no other group exists, or the mission of an existing group doesn’t quite meet our needs. In other instances, NACS joins an existing group and adds its influence to pass or defeat a bill or amendment.
The following are some of the coalitions, partnerships and alliances that NACS is currently a part of in working on issues critical to convenience retailers.
SWIPE FEES
Merchants Payments Coalition
In the early 2000s, NACS started hearing from retailers about the growing amount they were being charged by the credit card industry every time a customer used plastic to pay for fuel or goods. These fees—better known as swipe fees—quickly became the second highest operating cost for the industry, and it wasn’t long before the amount paid in swipe fees exceeded pretax profit. Fees were impacting retailers of all sizes, and fuel retailers were being hit particularly hard as customers started paying more and more at the pump.
In 2005, NACS founded the Merchants Payments Coalition (MPC) to seek legislative reforms to the credit card market and relief for retailers. MPC’s membership is made up of a group of retailers, convenience stores, supermarkets, restaurants, drugstores, movie theaters, online merchants and other businesses with one common goal—bringing competition to the payments card market that will put downward pressure on swipe fees.
The biggest legislative accomplishment of MPC to date is passing debit reform, also known as the Durbin Amendment, in 2010. Debit reform set a limit on what issuing banks can charge merchants on debit transactions, and it also required two unaffiliated networks on a debit card. NACS and MPC have had to fight hard to protect these reforms, and we have been successful in staving off three attempts to delay or repeal them.
During the 117th Congress, NACS and MPC have been working diligently to get legislation introduced that would finally bring competition to the still unregulated credit card market. Our efforts have gotten the attention of the credit card companies, which are out in full force again opposing any change to their cartel scheme. What has always made the MPC, and NACS for that matter, successful is bringing together and activating the collective voices of our retail members in these efforts.
Learn more at www.merchantspaymentscoalition.com.
SECURE PAYMENTS PARTNERSHIP
The United States pays the highest swipe fees in the industrialized world. We also have the highest fraud. Those two facts are not unrelated. When there is a duopoly like Visa and Mastercard, it can wield market power to preserve that duopoly. The card networks have done this with the standard-setting process at both EMVCo and PCI. Only the global card networks have a voting voice in the standards that affect the entire payments ecosystem, and that results in standards that are less secure but beneficial to the card brands. Rolling out EMV without PIN technology was one prime example of this behavior.
The Secure Payments Partnership (SPP) was founded in 2018 to bring light to these issues and advocate for reforms. The founding members were NACS, the National Retail Federation, the National Grocers Association, the Food Industry Association and Shazam, a debit network based in Iowa.
The coalition has lobbied for a fair and open standard-setting process where all stakeholders have a voice, including retailers, smaller networks, processors, banks and consumer groups. A coalition white paper, “Payment Insecurity: How Visa and Mastercard Use Standard-Setting to Restrict Competition and Thwart Payment Innovation,” was influential in the U.S. Department of Justice filing suit to stop Visa’s planned acquisition of the payment company Plaid.
Learn more at www.securepaymentspartnership.com.
EVs AND EV CHARGING
Charge Ahead Partnership
With federal and state policymakers aiming to transition our transportation system from fossil fuels to electricity, it is critical that convenience and fuel retailers work with other organizations to ensure that a competitive market exists for all transportation fuels. Retailers want to provide drivers with whatever fuel powers their vehicles. Our industry is in a unique position to provide consumers the ability to charge their EVs at our 116,000+ stores in desirable locations in every city, county and state across the nation. The current electricity market is outdated and ill-equipped to handle a competitive EV charging market. Removing barriers to private sector investment is imperative to the long-term development of EVs. The competitive forces that govern the liquid fuel marketplace benefit the consumer and should be a model for the EV charging marketplace.
To advance competition and private-sector investment, NACS helped create the Charge Ahead Partnership, a large and diverse coalition of business es, associations and individuals that share the common goal of efficiently and effectively developing a nationwide EV charging network and eliminating barriers to private-sector investment in building the needed infrastructure. The group has been working at the state level to create a competitive electricity market for EV charging in states such as Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and Ohio. It also has engaged in a communications campaign to inform policymakers of the changes needed to achieve its goals.
Learn more at www.chargeaheadpartnership.com.
SUPPLY CHAIN
The SHIP Coalition
The Safer Hauling & Infrastructure Protection (SHIP) Coalition, also known informally as the Shippers Coalition, is focused on supply chain challenges by improving the transport of goods and services on U.S. highways and roads. A few of the issues the coalition has been working on include increasing the gross vehicle weight limit for large trucks on interstate highways, improving the hours-of-service waiver process, allowing truck drivers who are 18 to 20 years old and are appropriately trained and certified to participate in interstate commerce, and expanding financial incentives and aid for truck driver education, certification, training and recruitment programs to address the truck driver shortage. NACS has been working on these issues and identified the SHIP Coalition as a way to maximize our voice and influence on these issues. Members of the coalition include other transportation associations and food and beverage manufacturers and other retailers.
Learn more at www.shipcoalition.org.
SCORe Coalition
One of the dynamics that has exacerbated supply chain disruptions over the past two years is known as the “bull whip” effect. The idea is that lack of information regarding the need for products across the supply chain leads to swings in which manufacturers and wholesalers cannot make or get enough product to market and then times when they get too much product to market. The increasing uncertainty of the need for product at each step of the supply chain multiplies these problems.
The Supply Chain Optimization and Resilience (SCORe) Coalition was formed to take on this long-term problem. The coalition includes retailers, importers, wholesalers, U.S. ports, shippers and more. The coalition has worked with the Biden Administration to create a standardized data portal that the entire supply chain could use to cut down on information deficiencies that lead to supply chain stresses. While developing the portal is a long-term project, it has the potential to directly mitigate one of the most troublesome causes of recent supply chain challenges.
LABOR
The Critical Labor Coalition NACS is a founding member of the Critical Labor Coalition (CLC), which is made up of various industries mostly in foodservice and hospitality with a focus on finding new ways to get workers into the labor force. NACS and CLC have already worked with members of Congress on legislation to create a new employment-based immigration visa and continue to work on ways to reduce the Social Security system barriers preventing older Americans from returning to work.
Learn more at www.criticallaborcoalition.com.
Partnership to Protect Workplace Opportunity
NACS joined the Partnership to Protect Workplace Opportunity (PPWO) in 2014. PPWO is focused on regulations under the Fair Labor Standards Act, most notably the overtime exemption regulations. The coalition is made up of a wide variety of businesses and business associations interested in reasonable overtime rules.
Learn more at www.protectingopportunity.org.
ANTITRUST
Main Street Competition Coalition
NACS is a founding member of the Main Street Competition Coalition, which formed in 2021. The coalition is made up of business trade associations whose members are often taken advantage of by certain suppliers in pricing and product availability. The coalition’s goal is to advocate for the enforcement and strengthening of the Robinson Patman Act, which prohibits price discrimination among competitors. This is behavior the convenience industry is often subjected to by nonalcoholic beverage manufacturers. So far, the coalition has garnered support from members of Congress in the form of a letter sent to the Federal Trade Commission arguing for more enforcement actions in the space.
Learn more at www.mainstreetcompetition.com.
CANNABIS
The Coalition for Cannabis Policy, Education and Regulation
NACS is the first, and so far, only retail trade association to join the Coalition for Cannabis Policy, Education and Regulation (CPEAR). CPEAR’s goal is to ensure that any federal legislation legalizing recreational marijuana use comes with responsible regulations that do not prohibit businesses from the retail or supplier markets that would be created. The coalition has continued to educate members of Congress and their staffs about regulations that would make sense and have focused primarily on Republican offices to raise the comfort level with that type of legislation. The coalition has worked with various members of Congress on both sides of the aisle to help shape pending legislation.
Learn more at www.cpear.org.
DATA PRIVACY AND SECURITY
Main Street Privacy Coalition
NACS is a founding member of the Main Street Privacy Coalition, which is comprised of a broad array of national trade associations representing businesses. From retailers to realtors, hotels to home builders, gas stations to grocery stores, restaurants to convenience stores, the coalition is seeking federal privacy legislation that makes all businesses responsible for their own conduct, preserves customer benefit and loyalty programs, creates uniform federal standards, ensures all industry sectors that handle consumer personal information have equivalent legal obligations to protect consumers’ privacy under the law and does not include any exemptions. This summer, House and Senate committees are tackling privacy legislation, and the coalition is working closely to ensure these principles are included in any bill.
Learn more at www.mainstreetprivacy.com.
FOODSERVICE
Food & Beverage Issue Alliance
The Food & Beverage Issue Alliance (FBIA) is made up of various trade associations and businesses in the foodservice industry including retailers and supplier companies. The alliance goals are broad: Work with federal regulators, largely the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), to help influence regulations to ensure that they are not unduly burdensome to the business community. FBIA hosts quarterly conference calls with senior FDA staff to help share the industries’ thoughts and concerns regarding pending regulations. FBIA members also helped lead comment campaigns on pending FDA regulatory matters in the food space. Learn more at www.feedingus.org.
TAXES
LIFO Coalition
LIFO accounting is widely used in the convenience industry, and the goal of this coalition is to preserve its legality. The larger coalition is made up of businesses and trade associations representing a wide swath of the economy who use the LIFO accounting method to help manage their inventory and tax liabilities. To date, the coalition has beaten back numerous attempts to not only repeal LIFO accounting but also to retroactively tax the so-called LIFO reserves.
Learn more at www.savelifo.org.
Family Business Estate Tax Coalition
The Family Business Estate Tax Coalition is made up of family-owned businesses with an interest in reducing or eliminating the “death tax”that often costs families thousands of dollars when a family business is passed from one generation to the next. Many NACS members are family businesses and would see a significant benefit
in passing on the family business to new generations if the death tax were eliminated or reduced. The coalition has been successful in at least keeping the death tax provisions where they are post TJCA and helped prevent efforts to increase the rates or thresholds in recent years.
Learn more at https://estatetaxrelief.com.
S-Corp Association
With many NACS members’ businesses organized under subchapter S of the Internal Revenue Code, NACS joined the S-Corp Association. It is a coalition made up of businesses of all sizes, which are organized primarily as pass-through entities. The coalition’s goal is to maintain at least close to equivalent tax treatment of S-Corp companies as compared to C-Corp companies. Much of the recent focus has been on the 199(A) deduction included in the TCJA, which created the business income deduction for individuals who own their own businesses. Work continues to make that deduction permanent. The coalition has successfully recruited members of Congress to introduce legislation to make the 199(A) deduction permanent.
Learn more at www.s-corp.org.
TRANSPORTATION
Alliance for Toll-Free Interstates
NACS is a member of the Alliance for Toll-Free Interstates, formed to educate the public and policymakers about the negative impact that tolling existing interstates has on businesses located off these highways. During the infrastructure bill debate, the alliance defeated attempts to expand tolling on existing federal highways.
Learn more at www.tollfreeinterstates.com.
Partnership to Save Highway Communities
NACS is a longstanding member of the Partnership to Save Highway Communities, which advocates against attempts to bring commercial activity to interstate rest areas. The coalition includes a diverse array of business groups, municipal groups and the National Federation for the Blind. All of these groups recognize that commercializing interstate rest areas would hurt existing businesses built at interstate exits, undercut local tax bases and undermine vending businesses operated at rest stops by blind entrepreneurs. The coalition has defeated federal efforts to relax the existing federal ban on rest-stop commercialization several times, most recently in the context of efforts to put EV chargers at rest stops through the bipartisan infrastructure bill passed in 2021.
Learn more at www.jobsnextexit.com.