Trump Gives the Green Light to American Companies to Engage in Corruption Abroad
Given his own penchant for personal grift, Donald Trump seems to see bribery and political corruption as the normal way of doing business. So it’s no surprise that one of his first acts in office is to suspend enforcement of a law against bribing foreign officials.
The New York Times reports:
President Trump on Monday ordered a pause in the enforcement of a federal law aimed at curbing corruption in multinational companies, saying it creates an uneven playing field for American firms.
The law, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, makes it illegal for companies that operate in the United States to pay foreign government officials to secure business deals. Though the law was enacted in 1977, federal authorities have more heavily enforced it since around 2005, cracking down on bribery, especially in countries where it is a common business practice.
Mr. Trump has objected to the law, which has led to charges and huge fines against some of the world’s largest companies. …
Mr. Trump has been among the critics who have argued that the law’s reach has left American companies at a competitive disadvantage abroad. He said in a 2012 CNBC interview that “the world is laughing at us” for enforcing the law, and in 2017 he nominated Jay Clayton, a lawyer who had expressed skepticism about U.S. antibribery policies, to run the S.E.C.
The Constitution tasks the president to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed”—not to suspend enforcement of the ones he doesn’t like. But asking Congress to change the law would require getting a majority to endorse an open season for foreign bribery.
The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.
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