How does home country reputation affect foreign firms' non-market strategies? We address this question using unique longitudinal data on foreign lobbying in the U.S. We find that when external events tarnish a country's reputation, firms in that country increase their lobbying of U.S. politicians who have prior connections to the country, and thus are most exposed to stakeholders' backlash. Further corroborating the effect of domestic stakeholders on international non-market strategies, we find that the increase in lobbying is concentrated among politicians from states with strong political competition and where citizens have weak social ties to and negative views of the shocked country. Our results suggest that firms adapt their international lobbying strategies not only to political distance between countries, as found by prior research, but also to the varying features of political stakeholders within a country.
