The Haier Smart Home NOligarchy Profile
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Haier Smart Home earns a NOligarchy Score of 70.2 out of 100 — a middling grade driven by active federal lobbying and a pay gap that exists but cannot be fully measured, offset only by a spotless regulatory record.
Current Pillar Scores
Political Access
57.5
Wealth Extraction
69.2
Playing by the Rules
100.0
Score history — 23 quarters
Tier bands show where each quarter's score falls — no numeric y-axis needed. The dashed ring marks the year-over-year comparison point. Tap any quarter but the first to see its pillar breakdown.
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Political Access Grade: 57.51/100. Haier Smart Home chose to engage Washington during the second half of the two-year period, spending $600,000 on federal lobbying while reporting zero Political Action Committee (PAC) contributions and zero executive campaign donations. The spending itself is the problem that drags this grade down.
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Wealth Extraction Grade: 69.5/100. As a foreign-owned private company, Haier Smart Home discloses almost nothing about what it pays its workers or executives. The grade reflects an estimated pay gap that cannot be independently confirmed, paired with the complete absence of publicly recorded stock buybacks or dividends.
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Playing by the Rules Grade: 100/100. No regulatory fines and no public subsidies appear anywhere in the tracking record — a genuinely clean docket.
Haier Smart Home ranks 10th out of 12 companies sharing its federal industry classification — Electronics and appliance retailers. The sector average NOligarchy score is 83.5, meaning Haier Smart Home trails its industry’s baseline by more than 13 points, placing it near the bottom of its peer group.
The Bottom Line: A Foreign-Owned Giant That Speaks Softly in Washington — and Discloses Very Little
From Q3 2024 through Q2 2026 (eight quarters — the two-year tracking period), the sharpest imbalance in Haier Smart Home’s public record is not a pattern of fines or a mountain of shareholder payouts. It is the combination of deliberate Washington lobbying by a Chinese state-linked company and near-total opacity about worker compensation. The company poured $600,000 into federal lobbying — then reported nothing in PAC spending or executive donations, and disclosed nothing about what it pays its employees or chief executive. A clean regulatory docket is real credit. But a company that chooses to lobby Congress while telling the public almost nothing about its internal pay practices is one whose accountability picture is fundamentally incomplete.
Spending to Buy a Seat at the Table — and It’s a Chinese-Owned Company Doing the Asking
Haier Smart Home spent $600,000 on federal lobbying across the two-year period — all of it concentrated in the final four quarters, from Q3 2025 through Q2 2026. That ramp-up is notable: the company was silent in Washington for the first half of the tracked period, then abruptly ramped its access spending to $120,000 a quarter, and held it there. That is roughly $1,600 in lobbying fees for every business day of the second year.
The filings were made by Haier US Appliance Solutions, Inc., doing business as GE Appliances — a brand most American consumers still associate with a domestic manufacturer. Haier Group Corporation, its Chinese parent, acquired the GE Appliances division from General Electric in 2016. The Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) filings themselves carry a foreign-entity disclosure flag, meaning the registered lobbyist acknowledged the relationship to an overseas principal.
The issue areas Haier’s lobbyists worked across all four quarters are directly tied to the company’s business interests as a Chinese-owned appliance maker selling into the American market. Filings cite four equal-weight areas:
Energy and appliance standards. Lobbyists repeatedly cited H.R. 4626, the “Don’t Mess With My Home Appliances Act” across every quarter of active lobbying. GE Appliances manufactures the refrigerators, dishwashers, and washing machines subject to Department of Energy efficiency rules — federal standards that directly set design and cost requirements for every product it ships.
Trade policy. Filings cited P.L. 119-21, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” specifically its tariff provisions, as well as general tariff issues. For a company that manufactures appliances and sources components globally under a Chinese parent, import tariff policy is not an abstract concern — it is the margin on every unit sold.
Tax provisions. The same “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” filings also referenced its tax provisions. Corporate tax changes affect the bottom line of any large US operating subsidiary.
Manufacturing and retail crime. Lobbyists cited S. 1404, the “Combating Organized Retail Crime Act,” under the manufacturing issue heading. GE Appliances sells through major retailers nationwide, and organized retail theft directly affects product loss at the point of sale.
Haier Smart Home retained one outside lobbying firm to carry this agenda, with two registered lobbyists working the filings. Both the House of Representatives and the Senate were contacted 16 times each across the period. The U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) and the Department of Commerce each received one contact — both logical pressure points for a company navigating tariff disputes.
The company reported zero PAC contributions and zero executive campaign donations to the Federal Election Commission (FEC). No former government officials rotate through the lobbying operation.
FEDERAL CONTACT LOG
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
16
≈ every 31st business day
SENATE
16
≈ every 31st business day
Commerce, Dept of (DOC)
1
≈ every 500th business day
U.S. Trade Representative (USTR)
1
≈ every 500th business day
4 federal bodies named in federal lobbying filings · 2024-Q3–2026-Q2
Between 2024-Q3 and 2026-Q2, Haier Smart Home was named in lobbying filings reaching 4 federal bodies — from HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES to SENATE.
An Undisclosed Pay Gap With No Buybacks to Measure
Haier Smart Home is a foreign private company and is not required to publicly disclose its chief executive officer pay ratio. The best available figure is 115:1, based on AFL-CIO Executive Paywatch industry benchmarks for comparable companies in this sector. That benchmark means the person at the top is estimated to take home 115 times what a typical frontline worker earns — but because no public filing confirms it, the true gap could be wider or narrower. No employee headcount is publicly disclosed, and no annual report breaks out what the median GE Appliances worker earns. That silence is not an accident — it is the natural consequence of operating as a private subsidiary of a foreign corporation with no US disclosure obligation.
No stock buybacks or dividend payments appear anywhere in the available public record for this company during the two-year period. That means there is no shareholder payout figure to calculate a missed worker raise against, and no mechanism by which a deliberate reduction in shares outstanding that inflates per-share metrics and triggers executive performance bonuses can be documented here. Whether that reflects an absence of shareholder returns or simply an absence of disclosure is not determinable from the public record.
A Clean Record on the Public Docket
Haier Smart Home carries zero regulatory fines and zero public subsidies in the two-year tracking period. No federal agency action, no state-level penalty, and no government grant appear anywhere in the matched public record. For a company operating at the scale of GE Appliances — one of the largest appliance brands sold in the United States — a completely clear docket is worth acknowledging plainly.
No subsidy data is present, so there is no public-money contrast to draw. The clean record stands on its own.