TOI correspondent from Washington: Asserting that a 50-year old US anti-bribery act is inhibiting American global competitiveness, US President Donald Trump has paused enforcement of the law, implicitly providing relief to India’s Adani group, whose executives were being prosecuted under the law by the Biden administration.
In an executive order he signed on Monday, Trump argued that “overexpansive and unpredictable enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act 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.”
“The President’s foreign policy authority is inextricably linked with the global economic competitiveness of American companies. American national security depends in substantial part on the United States and its companies gaining strategic business advantages whether in critical minerals, deep-water ports, or other key infrastructure or assets,” the EO said.
Although the Trump EO, coming 36 hours before Prime Minister Modi’s visit to Washington to meet him, made no explicit reference to the Adani group, the Biden administration’s Justice Department and Security and Exchange Commission last November charged its Chairman Gautam Adani, his nephew Sagar Adani, and Cyril Cabanes, a former executive of US-listed firm Azure Power Global Ltd, under the FCPA, alleging payoff to Indian officials to secure solar energy contracts. The Adani Group had called the allegations “baseless” and vowed to pursue all legal options.
The Adani group has interests in several projects of strategic importance to the US and its allies, from Africa to Australia to the Middle-East, including acquisition of 70 per cent of the Israel’s Haifa port, considered a gateway to West Asia.
On Monday, Trump came out swinging against the law after he signed the EO, telling reporters in the Oval Office, “It sounds good on paper, but in practicality, it’s a disaster. 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.”
The FCPA became law during the Carter presidency, and its anti-bribery statutes originally applied to only Americans and certain foreign issuers of securities before it was expanded during the Clinton presidency to apply to foreign firms which do business with the US.
“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,” Trump said, dumping on a recently-passed former president whom he disdained, having also blamed him for ceding the Panama Canal to Panama.
In the EO in which he directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to review the FCPA for 180 days and lay out new guidelines for enforcing it, Trump asserted that it would be the policy of his administration to preserve the Presidential authority “to conduct foreign affairs and advance American economic and national security by eliminating excessive barriers to American commerce abroad.”
Separately, Trump also offered a get-out-of-jail card to two prominent US politicians under the gun for corruption, even as his MAGA principals raged about purported fraud and misuse in USAID and other government departments.
On Monday, Trump’s Justice Department ordered federal prosecutors to drop the corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat who fell out with the Biden administration and decamped to the Trump orbit. Trump also pardoned former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, who was convicted of trying to sell a US Senate seat vacated by former President Barack Obama, saying “he was set up.”