Opinion – What Does the US’ Anti-Bribery Retreat Mean for the Global Struggle Against Corruption?
Rachel A. Schwartz and Lauren Cargal
Since its prime in the 1990s and 2000s, the international anti-corruption regime has plunged into an 'unprecedented crisis'. The United States’ radically shifting posture toward corruption is undoubtedly at the center of current troubles. Just decades ago, it served as the backbone of international anti-corruption enforcement. Landmark legislation like the 1977 Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), which prohibited US firms and individuals from bribing foreign officials to receive undue business advantages, catalyzed new international laws — most notably the 1997 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) Anti-Bribery Convention and the 2005 United Nations Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC). Their goal was to 'internationalize' anti-corruption measures and level the playing field by ensuring that foreign businesses faced the same kind of regulatory burden as their US counterparts.
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The results were significant. The legally binding OECD Anti-Bribery Convention was ratified by 47 states, which encompass “over two-thirds of world exports and almost 90% of total foreign direct investment outflows”. In the 25 years after the Convention went into force (1999-2024), member-states sanctioned 752 individuals and over 300 entities on foreign corrupt payments charges. While the UNCAC is, by contrast, non-binding, it has been ratified by 191 countries and provides sustained monitoring of anti-corruption progress, making non-compliance visible. Yet, these gains are in jeopardy with the US’ withdrawal from the center of international anti-corruption enforcement. Shortly after his 2025 return to office, President Donald Trump suspended the FCPA. Though the pause ended in June 2025, a Department of Justice (DOJ) memo opened the door to greater discretion in the FCPA’s enforcement under the pretext of defending US business interests. The implications of weakening anti-corruption enforcement at home are magnified by the dismantling of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which has curtailed transparency and accountability initiatives abroad.
With the US’ retreat, are we bound to see the global expansion of corruption? The ongoing deterioration of the international anti-corruption regime may not immediately normalize bribery; but for politically connected firms and developing countries, the consequences may still be significant. In the longer-term, the anti-corruption rollback will only foster a permissive environment for corrupt business dealings worldwide, especially for those connected to political power. Far from leveling the playing field for US corporations, the new business environment is also likely to give an edge to the US’ geopolitical rivals like China, which already impose fewer regulations and have made significant economic inroads throughout the Global South.
To assess the future of the international anti-corruption regime, we first must understand the extent to which the suspension of FCPA enforcement by the Trump administration has affected anti-bribery sanctions. According to data collected by scholar Richard Nephew, the number of corporate resolutions issued in 2025 due to FCPA violations (3) was one-third of the total during each of the previous two years (15). In monetary terms, the total penalties levied in 2025 were less than one-tenth of the previous year’s total.
But even if President Trump’s executive order has significantly curtailed FCPA investigations and penalties, it may prove more difficult to unwind the global anti-corruption architecture than it seems. Political dynamics and incentives may have made the FCPA self-enforcing, even amid the changing global order. For one, the FCPA remains on the books; its enforcement was merely paused and later subject to discretion via executive order. These decisions could easily be reversed by the next administration. As Bruce Swartz and co-authors note: "there is indeed good reason to believe that future administrations will return to faithful enforcement of the FCPA, since – until now – there has been bipartisan consensus that the FCPA is critical not only to US business but to US national security".
Recent US government actions also suggest that organized crime-related corruption – that is, collusion between public officials and non-state organizations involved in illicit activities – remains atop the national security agenda. In late April 2026, the US ambassador to Mexico, Ronald Johnson, indicated as much when he asserted that the US-Mexico trade agreement “requires our governments to criminalize bribery and corruption and enforce codes of conduct for public officials”. The following week, US prosecutors unsealed indictments against the governor of the Mexican state of Sinaloa and other top officials for shielding powerful drug cartels in exchange for bribes and campaign support. In addition, there is nothing to say that US states or corruption-fighting foreign governments will not fill the void left by the Trump administration. Both fears of future penalties and the presence of alternative enforcement frameworks may dissuade a decisive return to bribery as the main way of doing business, especially among multinational corporations with a lot to lose.
Even if anti-bribery standards remain self-enforcing among many firms, the marked decline in the United States’ will and capacity to fight corruption at home and abroad will continue to have serious economic and security implications. Among the most pernicious effects is the message it sends about the discretionary and politicized use of anti-bribery laws to sanction corruption. For corporations recurring to bribery, or public officials on the receiving end, the recent shift holds the promise of evading punishment by cultivating the right political ties.
The early period of Trump’s second term is rife with examples of politically connected individuals and firms skirting anti-corruption enforcement through quid pro quos to secure impunity. For example, according to the watchdog group Public Citizen, the DOJ and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) froze an FCPA case against Indian energy firms Adani Green Energy Ltd. and Azure Power Global, The companies’ billionaire executive Gautam Adani is not only an ally of Trump-friendly Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, but also pledged to invest $10 billion in the US following Trump’s second election. Similarly, a DOJ inquiry into FCPA violations by Pfizer in Mexico appeared to have been quietly shuttered early in Trump’s second term. Pfizer donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund, and the administration’s first attorney general, Pam Bondi, had previously performed legal services for the corporation.
In April 2025, federal prosecutors dropped charges against then-New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who was accused of accepting illegal campaign contributions and gifts from a Turkish official in exchange for favorable treatment, after he agreed to support the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement policies. Eight prosecutors resigned in protest, and the judge compelled to dismiss the case even stated that, “everything here smacks of a bargain: dismissal of the indictment in exchange for immigration policy concessions”.
In November 2025, President Trump offered a full pardon to former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who had been sentenced to 45 years in prison for colluding with the Sinaloa Cartel in its efforts to traffic illicit narcotics into the United States. Hernández framed his conviction as borne of the same politically motivated animus that Trump suffered under previous US President Joe Biden and enlisted the help of Trump confidante Roger Stone. The DOJ directive to “[prioritize] the criminal operations of cartels” thus appears to have been sidelined in the face of political connections and considerations. This contradictory posture is only likely to embolden corrupt actors confident that they can curry favor with the US administration.
The perception that well-connected firms and individuals can avoid accountability is not the only detrimental effect of the United States’ shifting posture toward anti-corruption. For decades, US law has sought to defend against the “race to the bottom” that would hurt US firms unable to compete with their bribe-happy competitors. But by relaxing anti-bribery enforcement to avoid injury to US economic competitiveness, this race to the bottom may well become a self-fulfilling prophecy. There is no shortage of commentary on how the United States’ retreat from global leadership has and will continue to give foreign powers like China opportunities to refashion the international political and economic order. The weakening of US led anti-corruption enforcement is likely to accelerate these trends.
Though the Chinese government has ramped up domestic anti-bribery enforcement under current president Xi Jinping, many posit that the recent moves are meant to help the regime criminalize rivals, rather than punish and stamp out graft. In addition, scholars have found that the domestic anti-corruption push has had little consequence for the behavior of Chinese firms toward foreign officials. In international business, China’s growth maximizing ethos has instead often treated bribery and other forms of corruption as potential competitive advantages, especially in the resource-rich Global South markets where Chinese investment has grown most significantly. A 2021 analysis by scholars at AidData found that 35 percent of infrastructure projects financed through China’s landmark Belt and Road Initiative demonstrated evidence of irregularities like “corruption scandals, labor violations, and environmental hazards”.
With the US withdrawal from anti-corruption enforcement and the instruments crafted to combat shady business practices weakened, corporations will be squeezed between the ethical standards that had become a part of doing business and the dirty dealings that could again become more normalized. Whether or not firms elect to compete on these more “ruthless terms” depends on their own cost-benefit analysis. If it’s more economically viable to do business with less-regulated states, then it would make sense for both businesses and other governments to lean into corrupt options over others. Unfortunately, there is no shortage of alternatives for resource-starved countries, which may already be home to crooked public sectors and criminal groups seeking to prey on the state.
Rachel A. Schwartz is an Assistant Professor of International and Area Studies and Director of the Center for the Americas at the University of Oklahoma. She is the author of Undermining the State from Within: The Institutional Legacies of Civil War in Central America (Cambridge University Press, 2023). She is currently writing a book on international anti-corruption support in Central America provisionally titled ‘When Impunity Fights Back: International Anti-Corruption Crusades and Democratic Erosion in Central America’.
Lauren Cargal is an undergraduate student majoring in International Security Studies and Spanish at the University of Oklahoma, where she is also president of the International Security Student Association (ISSA). She is also an intern at the Alliance Futures Initiative.