The Exhibitions & Conferences Alliance’s recently released 2026 Public Policy Agenda contains six main critical policy issue areas for the year — with trade, tariffs and international travel topping the list of federal and state policy priorities for the year ahead.

When a policy stone drops in Washington, D.C., the ripples inevitably touch the meetings, exhibitions and events industry. And there has been no shortage of event-splattering policy drops lately — a trend almost guaranteed to continue as we go deeper into 2026.

The Exhibitions & Conferences Alliance (ECA), a coalition of leading associations comprising the unified public policy voice of the U.S. business and professional events industry, is taking the lead to advocate for the industry’s best interests. Its recently released 2026 Public Policy Agenda outlines six critical policy areas it will be watching closely this year.

MeetingMentor recently sat down with ECA Executive Vice President Tommy Goodwin to learn more about what’s likely coming down the legislative pipeline this year that could have ripple effects on the meetings and events industry.

MeetingMentor: Affordability seems to be the key word in D.C. — and everywhere else — right now. What are some of the policies that could hit meeting and event organizers’ bottom lines, and those of their supplier partners and attendees?

Tommy Goodwin, Executive Vice President, ECA

Goodwin: Trade shows and conferences are a very cost-effective way to go to market, and if you lose that advantage that challenges the entire system. One example of policy that can affect affordability is tariffs that are raising costs for consumers — individuals and businesses, meeting organizers and exhibitors and attendees. We supported the delay on implementing an increased tariff on furniture — the industry buys about a quarter of a billion dollars of furniture, so yeah, we took that on, and finally got it right before New Year’s.

The big one we’re waiting on right now is the Supreme Court’s ruling on the legality of Donald Trump’s emergency tariffs, expected to be announced early this year. These are the reciprocal tariffs that blew up last April. The administration used provisions under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to levy the tariffs, even though it doesn’t contain the word “tariff.” We are hopeful the Supreme Court will overturn those tariffs and deem them unconstitutional. If not, it could cost U.S. importers — including those who serve the meetings, events and hospitality industries — at least $2.3 trillion over the next 10 years.

MM: What if the court rules the tariffs were imposed illegally?

Goodwin: The administration likely will urge Congress to pass new laws to codify the tariffs originally imposed under IEEPA. We would fight that.

MM: Are there other tariff- or trade-related issues on your radar?

Goodwin: We’re also watching the legally required review of the USMCA (United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement), which replaced NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) back in 2020. We’re going to be working to enunciate the benefits of that agreement because I think it would be very disadvantageous, both for the broader economy and the industry, if either of the three sides were to want to walk away from that agreement. Canada is the biggest international feeder market for attendees and the second-biggest feeder market for suppliers for U.S. meetings and event organizers.

Our hope is that this USMCA review will give us an opportunity to maybe walk back from some of those tariffs, and underscore how important that agreement is to the industry to make sure that — both from an attendee and a resource perspective — events south of the Canadian border have what they need.

There’s a widespread understanding within the business community that these agreements are a good thing, and we’re going to be fanning the embers of that agreement specifically and trade agreements more broadly in the coming year.

MM: International travel policy is also at the top of the ECA policy agenda for 2026. What specifically are you watching?

Goodwin: In general, it feels like 2026 is going to be the year of international policy out of D.C., between the tariffs and international travel, which is a mixed bag right now.

For example, the $250 “visa integrity fee” (implemented in October 2025 to be levied on non-immigrant applicants from countries not in the Visa Waiver Program). The new fee has yet to be rolled out and ECA — along with U.S. Travel, SISO, IAEE and PCMA — sent a letter recently calling on the administration to permanently shelve it. The idea behind the fee was to discourage visitors from overstaying their visas, but to universally apply it regardless of the overstay rate of the visitor’s country of origin just doesn’t make sense. It would make more sense to focus fees and enforcement efforts on countries that have high overstay rates.

On the flip side, around this time last year, there were around 90 embassies and consulates that had interview wait times of at least three months. It’s less than half that now. We lobbied a couple of years ago to get the State Department $50 million to address these backlogs, and it has clearly paid dividends.

2026 feels like an international fork in the road. We have some challenging things, like the visa fee; and some good news, like the wait times being down. We have the FIFA World Cup, the 250^th anniversary of America, and the Summer Olympics coming in 2028 — and all of the shows in our industry. Our hope is, as we get closer to some of these big headline events, we’re going to see more push on the positive side and more resources devoted to visa processing, which is such a dated process right now. We have technology — let’s use it. The fact that they’re talking about this is very good news.

MM: We hear a lot of anecdotal complaints about travel bans, having to provide social media postings as part of the border-crossing process, and even fear of gun violence giving some people cause to pause when thinking about attending an event in the U.S.

Goodwin: The proposed social media policy for Visa Waiver countries don’t necessarily have that material of an impact on how many people are coming to America, and neither do the travel bans. These policies only apply to maybe 1% who would be subject to them — but they also are being applied to the market of countries that care the most about it.

The problem is more the drip, drip, drip of all these policies making people around the world think the U.S. is closed for business. The U.S.’s competitiveness as a global destination for meetings, conferences, trade shows and associations is becoming the overarching challenge. Some of that won’t come out in the wash for years because of long bid cycles, and politicians who won’t be in office in 2030 or 2031, their heads just aren’t in the long tail of this. But some of the data is now beginning to trickle in, and there are folks in the administration who are beginning to understand this better.

ECA supports the policies it does because we want to reinforce the fact that the U.S. is a premier destination for global events. We want to make sure the anecdotes remain anecdotes and don’t become a new status quo.

MM: The ECA policy agenda also says ECA supports U.S. federal, state and local tax policies that “strengthen the competitiveness of our industry and safeguard its many stakeholders, including tax-exempt organizations.” Are there areas of concern when it comes to state and local efforts to enact taxes that could unfairly harm the industry?

Goodwin: There were a couple of provisions in the House tax reform bill that could potentially be reconsidered. One area I’m particularly attuned to are the provisions that targeted nonprofits that we got stripped out of that bill. There’s a swath of folks on Capitol Hill who would like to see a broad re-examination of the tax-exempt sector. While it’s not politically viable to revisit business income tax exemptions for trade shows, we will be involved in that conversation because associations play such an important role in our ecosystem.

Also, there’s an old saying on Capitol Hill that when Congress can’t legislate, they investigate. I think we may see a lot of congressional investigations this year, and some of them may target tax-exempt entities, even those that aren’t political in nature. I’m chairing an ASAE-led coalition called the Community Impact Coalition, which includes 100 different nonprofit groups to make sure that Congress understands the importance of the tax-exempt sector.

We’re also keeping a close eye on what’s happening at the state level. Some states are doing fine, while others are facing shrinking budgets. That’s going to create a lot of pressure on state and city budgets, which could result in tax proposals or spending cuts that would impact our industry. Do I provide free breakfast for underprivileged kindergarten kids, or do I pay for the DMO? That’s a hard political question.

There also are a lot of DOGE-like entities that have popped up in some states and cities, and we’re seeing new scrutiny on how money gets spent on the state and local level. We haven’t seen much that’s impactful yet, but we’re monitoring it closely, especially in states that have big budget gaps.

MM: Workforce development also is on the agenda, even with the big wins last year in getting the expansion of 529 college savings plans to include continuing education, training, and industry licenses and certifications into the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”

Goodwin: Now people can use that tax-advantaged savings to get professional trade certifications that will help accelerate your career. It also expands Pell grants to skilled workforce training instead of limiting them to college and university programs. So you can get a Pell grant now for forklift or carpentry certification, then go right onto the show floor.

While the grants are funded federally, they’re administered at the state level, so the states in 2026 will be rolling out rules and regulations around that Pell grant expansion, and we’ll be keeping a very keen eye to make sure there’s nothing done administratively that will stand in the way of folks. There also can be a lot of inconsistency, with some states doing things well and others not. We want to find states that are doing it well to show the other states an example, and/or to come back to Capitol Hill to say we’ve run into some problems with implementation, we need to do X, Y and Z to fix it.

Workforce development is always going to be on our agenda. That and sustainability will be on our policy agenda 20 years from now because they are absolutely critical to the future of our industry.

MM: Since you brought up sustainability…

Goodwin: Obviously, D.C. is going to be in a climate sustainability-related recession through at least January 2029 — we are in a very deregulatory environment with regard to sustainability. But our industry is already on a collective journey to net zero, so I don’t think we will be impacted by what we’re seeing out of D.C. right now. And at some point, the pendulum is going to swing back. In the meantime, our industry will continue to lead and make the investments to drive the changes it needs, so when the legislative or regulatory knife comes, we are so far ahead that it’s not a concern.

What we do have right now is a tangle, with some folks following one set of standards and others following another set of standards. What I’m hearing is that there needs to be some level of standardization. It’s not political and it’s not policy, but some folks would like to see something more akin to a unified path to net zero. ECA is supportive of that, because we want sustainability to be so simple that there’s no reason not to do it.

MM: The last point on your agenda is about supporting the operating environment — I’m not entirely sure what that means.

Goodwin: I believe the word is “miscellaneous.” Basically, we want the policy environment to support innovation and growth in our industry. For example, the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act (TRIA) is set to expire at the end of December. Under TRIA, when meeting and event organizers insure against terrorism as part of their event cancellation insurance, that policy is backstopped by the U.S. government. It has been reauthorized several times since 9/11, and ECA recently joined a coalition that includes organizations ranging from the NFL and NASCAR to airlines and railroad operators to lobby in support of extending TRIA for another five or 10 years. This is especially important now that convention centers are working to integrate the buildings into the community. So terrorism insurance is obviously very important to the industry.

Music licensing is another pain point for organizers, exhibitors and venues. The system used to just be ASCAP and BMI, but now there are a lot of new groups coming in and the system has become more opaque. We submitted comments along with 40 or so different industry stakeholders to outline where things can go south.

Data privacy is another issue, like sustainability, where there is a lot of variability from state to state. How do we get to a single federal privacy standard so everyone is playing by the same set of rules?

MM: It’s nice to have a list of policy areas to focus on, but the political environment has been very volatile lately, and likely will continue to be. How do you prepare for that?

Goodwin: ECA is going to be agile, no matter what shows up. Last year, our original policy agenda did not contain the word “tariff,” and it was issue No. 1 for the last 10 months of the year.

If an issue pops up, we’re going to be there on day one, because we have to be. The No. 1 internal driver of change in this industry is what happens from a policy perspective.

Note: To keep up to date on the latest, visit the ECA Advocacy Network, which includes ways to get involved and make your voice heard on issues that matter to you.

Also, mark your calendars for  ECA Legislative Action Day on May 28 in Washington, D.C., held in conjunction with Lippman Connects’ Exhibition and Convention Executives Forum (ECEF), which will take place on May 27. Following Legislative Action Day 2026, ECA, UFI – The Global Association of the Exhibition Industry and MAD Event Management will host the inaugural invitation-only Global Policy Forum, which will take place on May 29.