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America once led anti-corruption fight. Now self-dealing Trump is kleptocrats' role model.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/10/31/trump-boosts-kleptocrats-america-gives-up-corruption-fight-column/2476348001/Before Trump, America pioneered laws and diplomacy to curb corruption, and other countries followed our lead. Now we're a global model for kleptocrats.
. . .
The United States has long understood that corruption has profoundly corrosive and transnational ripple effects. Where there is impunity for official corruption, government itself becomes a means for the elite to enrich itself and silence its critics. Corruption allowed to fester breeds poverty, violence and instability that can have far reaching consequences. Human Rights Watch, the World Bank and others have documented how corruption often disproportionately harms the poor, denying them access to basic rights such as health, education and fair trials.
Recognizing this, the United States has pioneered groundbreaking efforts to curb corruption through its laws, enforcement and diplomacy. When the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act prohibited U.S. companies from bribing foreign officials in 1977, no other country had a similar law, but similar laws have since been enacted by the United Kingdom, Canada, Brazil, France and many other countries.
The 2010 Dodd-Frank Act required publicly traded oil, gas and mining companies to publish what they pay to foreign governments, a provision that inspired copycat laws in Canada, the European Union and Norway.
Also in 2010, the Department of Justice established an innovative kleptocracy asset recovery initiative, dedicated to seizing illicit funds laundered in the United States and returning them for the benefit of the public from whom they were stolen.
The United States, however, has retreated from this role under Trump, who once disparaged the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act as “ridiculous” and a “terrible law.” The Dodd-Frank transparency provision hasn’t yet gone into effect because Congress, with Trump’s support, repealed the federal rule creating the disclosure requirement and has yet to propose a replacement.
The Trump administration also withdrew the United States from the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, a global standard for transparency around natural resources. . . .
The United States has long understood that corruption has profoundly corrosive and transnational ripple effects. Where there is impunity for official corruption, government itself becomes a means for the elite to enrich itself and silence its critics. Corruption allowed to fester breeds poverty, violence and instability that can have far reaching consequences. Human Rights Watch, the World Bank and others have documented how corruption often disproportionately harms the poor, denying them access to basic rights such as health, education and fair trials.
Recognizing this, the United States has pioneered groundbreaking efforts to curb corruption through its laws, enforcement and diplomacy. When the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act prohibited U.S. companies from bribing foreign officials in 1977, no other country had a similar law, but similar laws have since been enacted by the United Kingdom, Canada, Brazil, France and many other countries.
The 2010 Dodd-Frank Act required publicly traded oil, gas and mining companies to publish what they pay to foreign governments, a provision that inspired copycat laws in Canada, the European Union and Norway.
Also in 2010, the Department of Justice established an innovative kleptocracy asset recovery initiative, dedicated to seizing illicit funds laundered in the United States and returning them for the benefit of the public from whom they were stolen.
The United States, however, has retreated from this role under Trump, who once disparaged the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act as “ridiculous” and a “terrible law.” The Dodd-Frank transparency provision hasn’t yet gone into effect because Congress, with Trump’s support, repealed the federal rule creating the disclosure requirement and has yet to propose a replacement.
The Trump administration also withdrew the United States from the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, a global standard for transparency around natural resources. . . .
5 replies
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to unbridled greed and corruption IMO. At that time the U.S. was still the "leader of the free world" and many countries not interested in joining the communist bloc tended to follow the "leader." Neoliberalism spread until now the corruption and inequality have created so much hardship and despair that people in a number of countries are in the streets protesting. And some of those protestors are getting killed doing it.
Trump probably got the GOP nomination because he's the King of Personal Greed and Corruption--what Republicans worship. He's a new low who is indeed likely to make the situation even worse globally.
Thanks Reagan.
