ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
The U.S. has been policing bribery all over the world for nearly half a century. But President Trump says antibribery laws are crippling American businesses, so he's changing these rules. Does this mean the government is bringing bribery back? Planet Money's Amanda Aronczyk says she'll pay you $100 in cash to listen to this story.
AMANDA ARONCZYK, BYLINE: Now, this doesn't happen very often, but back in 2011, the world welcomed a new country, the Republic of South Sudan.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: A nation is born. The scene in South Sudan is nothing less than electric.
ARONCZYK: This caught the attention of commodity traders because South Sudan has a lot of oil. So Javier Blas, who covers energy and commodities for Bloomberg, says that within days of independence, some traders flew to South Sudan on a private plane.
JAVIER BLAS: And they carry a special suitcase full with $800,000 in cash.
ARONCZYK: Cash?
BLAS: And...
ARONCZYK: Is this American cash? Is this euros? What is this?
BLAS: American dollars.
ARONCZYK: That cash was ostensibly for office expenses, but in reality, it was for securing lucrative oil contracts. These particular traders work for one of the world's largest commodity trading and mining companies, Glencore.
BLAS: They may have had some office expenses, but the bulk of those $800,000 was to pay bribes immediately.
ARONCZYK: Bribes that eventually drew the attention of the U.S. government because Glencore ran afoul of a law known as the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a law that prohibits companies from bribing officials in foreign countries in exchange for favors.
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DAMIAN WILLIAMS: The scope of this criminal bribery scheme is staggering.
ARONCZYK: In 2022, the Department of Justice held this press conference, accusing Glencore of years' worth of bribery and corruption.
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WILLIAMS: Glencore paid bribes to secure oil contracts. Glencore paid bribes to avoid government audits. Glencore paid bribes to judges to make lawsuits disappear.
ARONCZYK: So the DOJ required Glencore to pay more than $1.1 billion in criminal fines and forfeiture and to have compliance monitors closely watch their work for a few years. But then, a couple of months ago, the Trump administration started reducing the number of investigators. They killed some cases investigating bribery, and they canceled Glencore's compliance monitoring more than a year early.
JAMES KOUKIOS: This was very unusual.
ARONCZYK: James Koukios is a former prosecutor for the DOJ. He says that Trump has called the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act a horrible law. Now his administration is making changes in how the law will be enforced.
KOUKIOS: I think he's very much thinking of China.
ARONCZYK: China, because one of Trump's priorities is making sure companies have all the tools they need to obtain and produce critical minerals.
KOUKIOS: And so I think his theory is that if we do not pay bribes like China does, we will lose those things to China.
ARONCZYK: The Chinese government does not seem to be all that worried about Chinese companies paying bribes to foreign officials to get critical minerals.
KOUKIOS: Trump has long been of the view that when it comes to global economic competition, all gloves should be off and we should be able to fight fire with fire or bribes with bribes.
ARONCZYK: It seems that the Trump administration is deciding that if a company is buying and selling critical minerals to the U.S., that maybe there is no need to look too closely at what that business is up to.
Amanda Aronczyk, NPR News.
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