To be frank it’s remarkable that it took Donald Trump a whole three weeks to get round to freezing enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, given that it’s designed to stop malfeasance and has the word “foreign” in it, neither of which is exactly a signature cause of his.
Trump’s reasoning is somewhat similar to that on tariffs, the next two waves of which (on steel and aluminium, and reciprocal taxes to those charged by trading partners) he announced this week. He regards the FCPA, which prohibits companies bribing foreign officials, as putting American companies at a disadvantage compared to foreign competitors. It’s also a constraint on freewheeling executives. And therefore it’s automatically suspicious.
But this ignores that the FCPA may help rather than hinder fair competition. By extending US law abroad, not just over American companies but essentially any company with even a tenuous connection to the US, the FCPA has often been the closest thing to a heavy-duty enforceable legal international anti-bribery regime in existence.