OAN’s Matt Gaetz
Monday, May 12, 2025
Weaponized lawfare hurts American businesses and kills investment in American workers.
President Donald Trump is laser focused on winning for American workers, American businesses and American interests. Unfortunately, for decades we’ve been losing. One reason: the bizarre enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). We’ve seen the Chinese advance in Africa. A bevy of foreign hostile nations have made strides in Latin America, our near-abroad. China and rich Arab states subsidize their businesses to slay globally. America kneecaps our industry with threats of investigation over every modestly-aggressive business tactic.
Consider this absurdity: It was official U.S. policy to congratulate Qatar for hosting the World Cup. Had businesses in America pursued the opportunity in a similar manner, they probably would have been indicted. This makes no sense, and President Trump has rescued us from the hypocrisy dipped in failure.
Trump’s recent executive order to pause enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) is a long-overdue strike against a weaponized law that has mostly hurt our economy. China’s global value proposition is frequently lashed to a suitcase full of dollars. Russia offers muscle and regime preservation. America has to offer more than a USAID funded pride-parade. The honest, arms-length work of American business is the most important feature of American Soft Power – it always has been. American commerce carries along our success and our values.
The FCPA is an obscure statute with a misleading name. Like with many federal laws and programs, its stated purpose is the Orwellian opposite of its practical effect. For decades, this law has been used by unelected bureaucrats to project their own corrupt practices onto their domestic enemies.
The FCPA has become a favorite weapon of the deep state. Its vague provisions that expect American businesspeople to glean motives from foreign actors before doing business with them is a perpetual invitation for selective enforcement. Trump’s executive order takes this sword of Damocles out of the deep state’s hands.
The FCPA is literally sucking money out of the American economy. In 2018, the government levied $2.91 billion in FCPA corporate penalties – cash that could otherwise have been invested in plants, R&D, and payroll for American workers. Since 2020, the top-ten FCPA cases cost companies nearly $10 billion, with more than half of that money going to foreign countries, transferring American shareholder wealth overseas.
In a case that produced no criminal convictions, the feds forced Walmart to pay more than $1 billion – money that could have built 30 new Supercenters in the U.S. and supported 20,000 American jobs for a year. Many Americans would trust Walmart to do the right thing more than Congress or the DOJ! And the deep state has no problem going after small businesses, like Lindsey Manufacturing, whose case was thrown out for prosecutorial misconduct after they were forced to spend millions. Every dollar wasted on FCPA lawyers is a dollar we don’t spend on American jobs.
Meanwhile, not a single mainland Chinese corporation has ever paid an FCPA fine exceeding $50 million. When only Americans and our allies are benched by the refs, China plays and wins.
FCPA abuse also wastes taxpayer dollars going after allies who would invest in American growth, as in the story of Uriel Sharef, a businessman caught up in an FCPA case against Siemens, a German business ally with almost 50,000 workers in America and dozens of manufacturing sites across our country. He was acquitted from false charges by Germany’s top court a decade ago, but under liberal activist Obama appointee Preet Bharara, he became a scapegoat. He was dogged by years of lawfare despite not even being a US resident. It wasn’t about justice, it was about attacking a businessman they didn’t like.
How can we expect our business allies to invest in America when we are weaponizing the legal system against them? We need to encourage both domestic and foreign companies to build in America and create good-paying manufacturing jobs for Americans, instead of building in China and importing. But instead, we are chasing businesses away.
President Trump knows that when American companies are forced to play by fake rules that no one else follows, we get crushed. China doesn’t tie their companies up in red tape. But our DOJ will spend millions in taxpayer dollars chasing down American and allied businesses for paperwork errors while cartels run Chinese fentanyl across our southern border.
Trump gets it. That’s why he’s putting the brakes on this corrupt enforcement regime. American workers and the American economy have paid the price of this corrupt lawfare for long enough.
We should be helping companies win, not shackling them. We should be focusing our prosecutors on deporting criminal aliens, taking down cartels, and cleaning up our cities.
This is about freedom versus power. The FCPA has been a leash the globalists use to choke dissent. For years, they thought this favorite tool of theirs could be shielded by its high-minded name. But Trump, once again, has demonstrated his boldness by simply doing what’s right.
President Trump is back, he’s disarming the deep state, and he’s putting America First.
When Trump fights, America wins.
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