THE PRESIDENT TRUMP IS IN THE ”BRIBERY IS GOOD FOR BUSINESS” CAMP

 

…This is the way many foreign leaders see our president

The GOP lawmakers are also echoing the president’s ideas about bribery

The White House aides and the GOP law makers are sure taking a different approach in selling their Trumpworld concept of the president’s thinking.

They are actually stating that the Trump approach to the Ukraine affair was in no way where he was looking to smear a domestic political rival.  His team said, nothing could be further from the truth.

What he was doing, they say, was trying to root out his true goal, which is all of that international corruption.....that was his goal.

Yes, they are actually making that claim.

This was what was inside his impeachment brief from his presidential legal team.

This was what was being echoed in similar talking point made by various White House aides and GOP lawmakers.

It is true that the Ukraine has had a very long history of political corruption.  This has been known widely for many years.  And that is why they wanted to get rid of the US Ambassador, Marie Yovanovitch, who was doing just that, being very successful at getting rid of corruption.  She was doing this, but our current president is so corrupt himself that he is now saying that he wishes that it was, “easier to use bribes to get things done between nations.”

For a guy who claims to hate corruption, President Trump sure has a funny way of showing it.

Trump still says his phone conversation with the new Ukraine president was “perfect”.  But there were no words of anti-corruption in the conversation.  Instead, there are so many of Trump’s repeated attempts to destroy America’s world leadership role.

Trump began this “destroy” process almost immediately after taking office, when he killed the bipartisan anti-corruption rule that would have required energy companies listed on US stock exchanges to disclose how much they pay foreign governments.

Since then, he’s been hunting for ways to cripple the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA).

The FCPA, passed right after Watergate, and was a trailblazing law.  It said that bribes were illegal not only when paid to US officials, but also when paid to foreign ones. That is, people or entities that operate in the United States (whether or not they’re American) can be held criminally liable here if they grease anyone’s palms, such as China or Russia.

In criminalizing the payment of bribes in foreign countries, the FCPA arguably made the United States the first country to significantly make its own power by asking for more ethical business practices everywhere.

Some companies that were routinely pressed for kickbacks abroad, they welcomed the law.  They said that a well-publicized threat of US punishment has helped tie their hands. Other companies have complained that the FCPA puts them at a disadvantage relative to less scrupulous companies. In the decades since the FCPA was passed, it inspired international anti-corruption agreements and copycat laws in dozens of countries, which of course, helped to level the playing field.

Even so, President Trump remains firmly in the “bribery is good for business” camp.

As an example, in 2012 while he was doing his “birther” gig, he gave an interview to CNBC with a rant that “the FCPA is a horrible law and the world is laughing at us for enforcing it”.

He actually added: “Every other country goes into these places, and they do what they have to do,” he complained. “If American companies don’t offer bribes, too, you’ll do business nowhere.”

When Trump became president, he decided to act on his long-simmering contempt.  According to the blockbuster new book “A Very Stable Genius,” by The Post reporters Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig, Trump directed his then-Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson to help repeal the law.

“It’s just so unfair that American companies aren’t allowed to pay bribes to get business overseas,” Trump whined in the Spring of 2017, according to the book.  Yes, he actually complained that way.

Asked this last Friday whether the White House is still interested in kneecapping the FCPA, National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow, confirmed that the administration is “looking at it.”  He explained: “We have heard some complaints from our companies.” 

The question is, what does “our companies” mean? 

Does it only refer to the Trump Organization?  Or based on Trump’s comments, given the president’s frequent references to his own private interests, does it also refer to the executive branch of the US government?

After all, some legal experts have suggested that Trump may have run into the FCPA in the Ukraine event.  Trump’s relationship with the law has always been iffy; because the FCPA requires that something of value being offered to a government official as part of an effort to obtain or retain “business” is wrong.  This Is a serious problem if the “business” in question is the US presidency.

In any case, it seems highly unlikely that an aggressive US federal prosecutor, would even take on such a case, assuming the FCPA endures.  But you must know that other countries still have their own FCPA-inspired laws on their own books.  

In fact, the Trump-appointed head of the Securities and Exchange Commission recently gave a speech asking these other countries to step up their foreign enforcement.  So the burden falls less heavily on the United States to police the world’s corruption.

So, to those other countries out there: If our government won’t hold Trump accountable, maybe yours will?

Copyright G. Ater 2020