Experts doubt the effect of Serbia’s spending on US lobbyists to burnish the country’s image in the eyes of Donald Trump
By Ana Curic
Serbia has spent $3.2 million on Washington lobbyists since July 2023, almost half of it in the year since Donald Trump returned to the White House, BIRN can reveal.
The country is currently paying three US lobbying firms, two of them run by former Trump advisers – Valcour of Matt Mowers, Senior White House Advisor at the US State Department during Trump’s first presidency, and BGR Governmental Affairs, where former Trump campaign official David Urban is a director.
According to US watchdog Open Secrets, BGR Governmental Affairs is one of four lobbying firms with the highest rises in income since Trump’s second inauguration – soaring 59 per cent between 2024 and 2025 to $71.5 million.
Valcour was hired last year, specifically to promote the Expo 2027 trade fair being hosted by Belgrade.
With Trump in office, Serbia has shifted away from lobbying the likes of the Freedom House watchdog and solely mainstream US media to more direct outreach to administration officials and contact with right-wing media outlets.
Dimitrije Milic, programme director at the Belgrade-based think tank New Third Way and CEO of Belgrade-based strategic consultancy firm Lidington Research, said lobbying alone would not fix Serbia’s image in the eyes of the US.
“Serbia is a country that, due to its legacy from the 1990s, has the challenge of a lack of trust from the American establishment, and activities of this kind are even insufficient to gain trust from decisionmakers and influential groups in this country,” Milic told BIRN.
Under Trump’s Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden, Serbia signed two lobbying deals in July 2023 with KARV Communications and BGR Governmental Affairs.
Milic said the “proactive” move came at a time of heightened geopolitical polarisation following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, “which created a uniquely unfavourable international context for Serbia’s foreign policy of neutrality”.
Documents from the US Ministry of Justice show KARV has since been paid some $1.6 million and BGR Governmental Affairs $1.4 million.
According to a breakdown of payments reported by both firms, they were paid $1.1 million in the first nine months of 2025 alone.
Trying to promote its Expo trade fair, Serbia added Valcour last year for $195,000.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and the ruling Serbian Progressive Party, SNS, have invested much political capital into making Expo a success and in mid-2025 the government signed a 15.5-million-euro deal with four Serbian marketing companies.
Authorities have been criticised, however, for sidestepping regular procurement procedures and amending laws to accommodate the sprawling project.
Since Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, the US has slapped a 35 per cent tariff on imports from Serbia and imposed sanctions on Serbian oil company NIS, which is 45 per cent owned by Russia’s state-run Gazprom Neft.
The moves dashed any Serbian hopes that it might benefit from Trump’s transactional approach to international relations.
Milic said there had been hope in Serbia that relations with the US might improve under Trump and that his readiness to talk to Russian President Vladimir Putin might “bring about a thawing of relations between the two world powers, and therefore reduced pressure on Serbia to make a choice” between East and West. “That did not happen”, he said.
In Valcour, Serbia has bought the support of Mowers, who is described on the company’s website as a “top fundraiser” for the Trump-Vance Inaugural Committee.
As for KARV Communications and BGR Governmental Affairs, according to mandatory submissions to US authorities, they both spent 2025 organising meetings between Serbian and US officials, sending press materials to media and trying to set up media interviews for Serbian officials.
In 2023, during the Biden presidency, KARV Communications tried to set up a meeting with Freedom House, a prominent democracy watchdog, though it is unclear whether any such meeting ever took place.
In March of that year, in its influential Freedom in the World report, Freedom House said the SNS had “steadily eroded political rights and civil liberties, putting pressure on independent media, the political opposition, and civil society organizations”. As previously reported by BIRN, lobbyists hired by the Serbian Chamber of Commerce also tried to lobby Freedom House back in 2020.
Freedom House did not respond to a request for comment. Neither did Serbian Foreign Marko Djuric, who previously served as Serbia’s ambassador in Washington.
In 2024, the lobbyists reported reaching out to US officials, distributing invitations to embassy events and press releases promoting Belgrade’s position on a United Nations General Assembly resolution adopted in May that year declaring July 11 the International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the 1995 Genocide in Srebrenica, when Bosnian Serb forces killed some 8,000 Bosniak men and boys after overrunning the UN safe haven.
In 2025, after Trump’s return to office, the lobbyists began reaching out to more conservative and right-wing media outlets, such as Breitbart.
BGR Government Affairs reported sending press releases to US media in which Serbian authorities denied using a sonic weapon on peaceful protesters on March 15 that year amid a wave of popular anger over the deaths of 16 people when an outdoor canopy at a newly renovated railway station collapsed in November 2024.
The email with the subject line ‘Serbia Denies Allegations of Illegal Sonic Weapon Use Against Protesters’ was sent to 19 journalists from various media outlets including The Washington Post, The New York Times, Reuters, Politico, and ABC News.
Representatives of KARV, BGR Government Affairs and Valcour did not respond to requests for comment.
Despite the apparent transparency in the work undertaken by US lobbyists, much of it relies on self-reporting and may not provide a complete picture.
“Even when filings are technically compliant, they may not give the public a timely or complete picture of how foreign governments are seeking to influence US policy,” said Scott Greytak, deputy executive director at Transparency International US.
“The concern here is systemic – the law often reveals activity only after the influence has already occurred. […] When foreign governments spend millions of dollars to shape US policy, the public has a right to know who is behind the messaging and what they are trying to achieve.”
In an interview with BIRN, Greytak said foreign governments have the opportunity to present their views to Congress, including through hearings, briefings, and meetings with lawmakers and staff.
“When done openly and in compliance with the law, that is part of normal international engagement,” he said.
“The problem arises when lobbying firms or intermediaries are used in ways that obscure the foreign government’s role or sidestep diplomatic accountability. That is where transparency breaks down and where democratic safeguards start to weaken.”
Mladen Lisanin, a research fellow at the Institute of International Politics and Economics in Belgrade, said lobbying should only be seen as a tool.
“It is important for lobbying activities to be an addition to traditional diplomatic channels of communication, and not a way of entirely moving foreign policy into an informal sphere of personal relations,” he told BIRN.
“The Serbian public, and more importantly many of the country’s officials also often share two extreme views of lobbying: it is understood either as a magic wand, poised to remove all the bilateral problems from the political agenda, or as an utterly useless course of action and a waste of money.”
Neither view is correct, said Lisanin.
“Lobbying can be exceptionally useful, but only if it is a tool employed within a carefully crafted foreign policy strategy devised and conducted by competent individuals.”
