Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs President Trump on Monday ordered a pause in the enforcement of a federal law aimed at curbing corruption in multinational companies, saying it creates an uneven playing field for American firms.The law, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, makes it illegal for companies that operate in the United States to pay foreign government officials to secure business deals. Though the law was enacted in 1977, federal authorities have more heavily enforced it since around 2005, cracking down on bribery, especially in countries where it is a common business practice.Mr. Trump has objected to the law, which has led to charges and huge fines against some of the world’s largest companies. In November, U.S. prosecutors accused Gautam Adani, the Indian tycoon, of bribing Indian officials and charged him with fraud. His company has called those claims “baseless.”Other companies that have paid fines under the act include the engineering conglomerate Siemens and the Swedish telecommunications company Ericsson. In 2020, Goldman Sachs agreed to pay more than $2.9 billion to resolve charges that employees at its Malaysian subsidiary had paid $1 billion in bribes to foreign officials.The law has been “abused in a manner that harms the interests of the United States,” Mr. Trump’s executive order on Monday said, adding that its enforcement was impeding foreign policy objectives.The order bars federal authorities from starting any new investigations under the act or enforcing new actions for 180 days. The administration will also review existing investigations launched under the act, it said, to “restore proper bounds” on the law.It also directs the attorney general to issue new guidance on how to enforce the act “that promotes American competitiveness and efficient use of federal law enforcement resources.”Enforcement of the act has surged in the past two decades as business has become increasingly globalized. In 2004, there were only two criminal enforcement actions under the act. Last year, there were about 30 such actions by the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission.Mr. Trump has been among the critics who have argued that the law’s reach has left American companies at a competitive disadvantage abroad. He said in a 2012 CNBC interview that “the world is laughing at us” for enforcing the law, and in 2017 he nominated Jay Clayton, a lawyer who had expressed skepticism about U.S. antibribery policies, to run the S.E.C.Mr. Trump wanted to strike down the law in his first term, according to the book “A Very Stable Genius,” by the Washington Post reporters Philip Rucker and Carol D. Leonnig. They wrote that, in a 2017 briefing, Mr. Trump told the secretary of state at the time, Rex W. Tillerson, that the law was “so unfair” to American companies. Mr. Trump also told a policy adviser to draft an executive action to repeal the law, they wrote. But the adviser, Stephen Miller, responded that he was skeptical about that plan, and it ultimately did not come to fruition.
