President Donald Trump has ordered a pause and review of a law that has defined the activities of U.S. business overseas for nearly five decades, claiming that the strict prohibitions against bribing foreign officials strangle American competitiveness in a tough global market.
“It’s going to mean a lot more business for America,” Trump said as he signed the order on Monday for the Department of Justice to pause ongoing investigations and review the 1977 Foreign Corrupt Practices Act for the next six months.
The order argues that “overexpansive and unpredictable FCPA enforcement against American citizens and businesses — by our own Government — for routine business practices in other nations not only wastes limited prosecutorial resources that could be dedicated to preserving American freedoms, but actively harms American economic competitiveness and, therefore, national security.”
But the latest annual review of the law’s enforcement by Stanford Law School says the number of enforcement actions in 2024 were “well below the ten-year average of 36,” with 26 cases that year filed by the two entities responsible for enforcement — the DOJ and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
“This decline suggests that each bribery scheme yielded more unique actions against a corporation and its subsidiaries, employees, and agents, but that fewer separate schemes were targeted for enforcement in 2024,” the report concluded.
The president’s order garnered criticism from anti-corruption advocates.
“The world must not default to where bribery and corruption are the norm,” Gary Kalman, executive director of Transparency International U.S., said in a statement to VOA. “A race to the bottom harms both the citizens in the country and the businesses involved in corrupt transactions. Those who do choose to flout the law often face multiple bribery demands that delay or prevent these businesses from obtaining the licenses and permits they need to enter overseas markets. In the end, bribery is a lose-lose proposition.”
Bribery is still illegal
Private legal experts rushed Tuesday to clarify the order’s scope and significance.
“Bribery is still Illegal,” according to the headline of the analysis issued Tuesday morning by Washington-based multinational law firm Arnold & Porter.
The eight lawyer-authors go on to say in their analysis that not only does bribery remain illegal under the law, which has not been repealed by Congress, but also under various state, federal and foreign laws. They also note that other countries have boosted their enforcement of anti-corruption laws.
“For now, we recommend that companies wait and see what will happen, and meanwhile continue to focus on compliance,” the lawyers concluded.
Democratic Representative Jamie Raskin, a constitutional lawyer, said Tuesday that the new order “puts America on the side of ‘routine’ corrupt business practices all over the world.” The order, he said, gives corporations “free rein to pay bribes, kickbacks, and financial tribute to corrupt foreign officials.”
His statement also took aim at Elon Musk, the billionaire businessman whose closeness to Trump has put him at the head of efforts to radically reshape the U.S. government and target waste, fraud and corruption through his Department of Government Efficiency.
“The Trump-Musk Administration is making bribery and corruption perfectly legal again,” Raskin wrote in a statement. “The prices of eggs and other groceries, housing and rent and electricity continue to soar, but it just became a lot cheaper to engage in political corruption.”
Musk and his companies have tangled publicly with the SEC and the Department of Commerce, but neither his name nor those of any of the businesses he is associated with appears on either’s complete list of FCPA enforcement actions.
