The Shrinking US Chamber of Commerce

The nation's largest business lobby seems to be quite a bit smaller than it used to be – and not only because its members are leaving to protest the organization’s approach to climate change policy.

On its Web site and in public statements, the Chamber has claimed to speak for 3 million businesses. In reality, the number is about one tenth of that.

Earlier this week, Mother Jones reported that in1997, the Chamber suddenly changed its membership figure from 200,000 to 3 million, saying it represented “an underlying membership of more than three million businesses and organizations of every size, sector, and region.”

That “underlying membership” came from the fact that there are 2,800 state and local chambers around the country that do represent more than three million businesses, but in fact, they have little to do with the national US Chamber of Commerce. According to its own Web site, the Chamber “is not a governing body, chartering agent, or a regulatory agency for chambers of commerce, and we have no say in how chambers decide to run themselves.” And most local chambers have no say in how the national group decides to run itself, and they don’t get to vote for the national Chamber’s leadership.

The day after that story appeared, Mother Jones reported that at a Washington press conference, Chamber officials, without explanation, repeatedly cited their membership as 300,000.

Meanwhile, on the heels of several major departures from the Chamber over its obstructionism toward climate change regulation, an investors group representing $16 billion in assets wrote letters to 14 major U.S. corporations – Caterpillar, General Motors, Whirlpool and Xerox Corporation among them – asking the companies to publicly distance themselves from the Chamber’s positions on climate change and clean energy legislation.

- Suzanne Bopp