WASHINGTON − President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday evening pausing enforcement of a federal law that makes it a crime for U.S. businesses to bribe foreign officials, saying that the law puts companies at a disadvantage on the global stage.
Trump ordered newly confirmed Attorney General Pam Bondi to immediately stop actions taken under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, or FCPA, including prosecutions of American individuals and companies who the Justice Department has charged with bribing foreign government officials in attempts to gain business in other countries.
“It sounds good on paper, but in practicality, it’s a disaster,” Trump said. “It means that if an American goes over to a foreign country and starts doing business over there, legally, legitimately or otherwise, it’s almost a guaranteed investigation indictment, and nobody wants to do business with the Americans because of it.”
He added: “It was a Jimmy Carter concept, and it sounds so good, but it’s so bad. It hurts the country and many, many deals are unable to be made because nobody wants to do business.”
The new order is aimed at restoring American economic competitiveness by having Bondi draw up “revised, reasonable enforcement guidelines” for the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977, according to a White House fact sheet obtained by USA TODAY.
“American national security depends on America and its companies gaining strategic commercial advantages around the world, and President Trump is stopping excessive, unpredictable FCPA enforcement that makes American companies less competitive,” the fact sheet said.
The White House fact sheet also said U.S. companies “are harmed by FCPA overenforcement because they are prohibited from engaging in practices common among international competitors, creating an uneven playing field.”
All current and past actions also will be reviewed, the White House said. And once Bondi issues new, relaxed guidelines, all “future FCPA investigations and enforcement actions will be governed by this new guidance and must be approved by the Attorney General,” the White House said.
The White House said that over time, FCPA interpretation and enforcement by U.S. prosecutors “has broadened, imposing a growing cost on our Nation’s economy.”
In 2024, it said, the DOJ and Securities and Exchange Commission filed 26 FCPA-related enforcement actions, and at least 31 companies were under investigation by year end. Over the past decade, the White House said, there has been an average of 36 FCPA-related enforcement actions per year, “draining resources from both American businesses and law enforcement.”
“President Trump is committed to prioritizing American economic and security interests and ensuring U.S. businesses have the tools to succeed globally,” it said.
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Gary Kalman, executive director of Transparency International U.S., said Trump’s order “diminishes—and could pave the way for completely eliminating—the crown jewel in the U.S.’s fight against global corruption.”
Since it was passed in 1977, Kalman said, the FCPA has not only allowed the Justice Department to prosecute individuals and companies that pay bribes to foreign officials but forced firms to establish strict accounting requirements and controls in order to prevent them from covering up such crimes. As such, he said, it has become “a model law that has been emulated across the world.”
“The FCPA helps make American companies and the ‘Made in America’ brand stronger and more attractive,” Kalman said, “by proving that American goods and services are sought after because of their merit—not simply because they out-bribed their competition.”
More:Attorney General Pam Bondi sworn in, vows to end ‘weaponization’ of Justice Department
Trump weighed trying to scrap the law entirely during his first term after hearing complaints from U.S. companies, Bloomberg reported in 2020. Then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson opposed the proposal.
Bondi also de-emphasized investigations and prosecutions of U.S. companies for FCPA violations in one of 14 DOJ directives she issued on Feb. 5, her first full day on the job.
The new directive will have significant ripple effects within international legal circles – and at the Justice Department and FBI, which often spend years investigating and prosecuting such cases or negotiating plea agreements and deferred prosecution agreements.
“This significantly strengthens the hand of companies with ongoing FCPA investigations,” Trump’s former deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein, told USA TODAY late Monday. As a prosecutor and deputy AG, Rosenstein was a longtime champion of aggressive FCPA enforcement.
Rosenstein said that Trump began rolling back FCPA eight years ago, by granting credit to companies for cooperation with investigations and by stopping the practice of “piling on with penalties from multiple U.S. and foreign enforcement agencies.” “This new policy,” he added, “reflects President Trump’s longstanding concern about American companies losing business to foreign companies that can pay bribes without fear of prosecution.”
In one of its most significant victories, the Justice Department announced Oct. 16, three weeks before Trump’s election victory, that mega-defense contractor Raytheon Company of Virginia would pay over $950 million to settle foreign bribery and related charges in a scheme to help foreign governments purchase PATRIOT missile systems and operate and maintain a radar system.
In one of the schemes, Raytheon engaged in a campaign from 2012 and 2016 “to bribe a high-level official” within the Qatar government’s military “in order to assist Raytheon in obtaining and retaining business” from it, the DOJ said, citing admissions and court documents filed in the Eastern District of New York.
“We will continue to pursue justice against corruption, and as this agreement establishes, enforce meaningful consequences, reforms and monitorship to ensure this misconduct is not repeated,” U.S. Attorney Breon Peace for the Eastern District of New York said at the time.
Raytheon’s “criminal schemes to defraud the U.S. government in connection with” the contracts “erodes public trust and harms the DOD, businesses that play by the rules, and American taxpayers,” Deputy Assistant Attorney General Kevin Driscoll of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division also said at the time.
“Today’s resolutions, with criminal and civil recoveries totaling nearly $1 billion, reflect the Criminal Division’s ability to tackle the most significant and complex white-collar cases across multiple subject matters,” Driscoll said.
Bondi released her new directive regarding FCPA in a memo titled “Total Elimination of Cartels and Transnational Criminal Organizations.”
In it, “AG Bondi has both shifted the focus of FCPA prosecutions away from traditional corporate subjects and expanded the scope of prosecutors who can initiate certain categories of FCPA cases,” according to an analysis by the Foley Hoag law firm’s White Collar Law and Investigations practice.
It said the gist of Bondi’s memo was that the DOJ Criminal Division’s Foreign Corrupt Practices Act Unit shall prioritize investigations related to foreign bribery that facilitates the criminal operations of Cartels and TCOs, and shift focus away from investigations and cases that do not involve such a connection.”
In other words, the analysis said, the FCPA Unit has been directed to “shift focus away” from the corporate cases that have defined much of its recent work,” absent a connection to cartels and transnational criminal organizations.