Making America Corrupt Again

Among the many reasons why the people of Greenland would be better off sticking with Denmark rather than giving in to Donald Trump’s pressure campaign is the matter of public integrity. Transparency International (TI) has just released the latest edition of its Corruption Perceptions Index, and the country whose public sector once again ranks as the most honest in the world is the Kingdom of Denmark.

On a scale of zero to 100, Denmark gets a score of 89. Only four other countries score above 80: Finland, Singapore, New Zealand, and Norway. The United States, by contrast, drops to its lowest-ever score of 64, with a ranking of 29th place. That puts it behind nations such as the United Arab Emirates, Uruguay, and Estonia.

This slide, which TI notes does not yet fully reflect 2025 developments, does not come as a surprise to anyone who has been paying even limited attention to the news. Along with practices such as cruelty to suspected undocumented migrants and gunboat diplomacy, rising corruption has been one of the hallmarks of Trump 2.0.

The TI index, which is based on assessments by a dozen research institutions, measures not only direct corrupt practices such as the prevalence of bribery of public officials and the extent to which those officials may be using their position in other ways for improper personal gain. It also assesses the deterioration of laws and practices meant to discourage corruption. These include judicial independence and legal protection for whistleblowers and journalists who shine a light on misconduct.

Both direct and indirect corruption have proliferated since Trump retook office. He has obliterated norms regarding the pursuit of outside business interests, vastly enriching himself and his family to the tune of $1.4 billion, according to a New York Times analysis.

Trump has abused the powers of his office to extract payments from corporations that may not meet the strict definition of bribery but should nonetheless be regarded as corrupt. These include settlements paid by media companies to resolve baseless lawsuits filed against them by Trump and the extravagant sum paid by Amazon to Melania Trump for the rights to a vanity film the First Lady arranged to have made about herself.

Another form of corruption consists of payments not directly to the Trumps but rather contributions to his pet projects, such as the White House ballroom, by corporations seeking to influence federal policies.  

Trump’s indirect acts have included the dismissal of the inspectors general of 17 federal agencies, thus making it a lot less likely that corruption within agencies will be detected. The administration has also taken action against journalists, including the highly unusual raid of a Washington Post reporter’s home by the FBI. Other assaults on civil society include steps toward the criminalization of certain kinds of non-governmental organizations.

TI warns that when democratic institutions are weakened and corruption flourishes, it is more likely that government will come under the control of narrow vested interests. The United States is moving steadily in that direction as the result of an unholy alliance between large corporations and the interests of Trump and his family business. They are reaping the full benefits of the “golden age of America” Trump promised in his second inaugural address. The rest of the country is left with something a lot less gilded.

Real and Fake Solutions to Inflated Drug Prices

High prescription drug prices are one of the main components of the affordability problem that continues to afflict all but the most affluent Americans. Public officials are addressing the issue, but in two very different ways. One is a gimmick that will do little good; the other is a meaningful attack on pharmaceutical abuses.

On one side we have Trump’s approach, which is to create a web platform—named after himself, of course—that claims it will provide access to the lowest prices. TrumpRx, which at this point contains only a large photograph of its namesake in the Oval Office along with grandiose promises, is designed to inform consumers about special deals that will be available through purchases directly from drug manufacturers.

Like many of Trump’s initiatives, TrumpRx is characterized by misleading claims, conflicts of interest, and potential illegality. In many cases, the promised savings are illusory. The prices consumers pay when buying directly from the drug companies will be higher than what they would pay using insurance. Those without insurance may benefit, but the amount of the benefit is declining as the companies which signed up for TrumpRx have been raising their prices.

Concerns about a conflict of interest stem from the fact that the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., sits on the board of BlinkRx, a company which is positioning itself to profit from TrumpRx by helping drug companies set up direct-to-consumer systems linked to the program.

And concerns about illegality are linked to the possibility that TrumpRx may run afoul of the Anti-Kickback Statute by steering patients to higher-cost medications that they may end up receiving through Medicare and Medicaid.

Compare this mess to the recent announcement that attorneys general from 48 states and territories had reached a settlement with Bausch Health and Lannett Company to resolve allegations they conspired “to artificially inflate and manipulate prices, reduce competition, and unreasonably restrain trade with regard to numerous generic prescription drugs.” The firms agreed to pay nearly $18 million and consented to a set of reforms designed to promote fair competition.

At the same time, 42 states and territories filed a new lawsuit against drug giant Novartis and its subsidiary Sandoz, accusing them of fixing prices, allocating markets, and rigging bids for 31 different generic drugs.

These are just the latest developments in a long-running legal battle against anti-competitive practices in the generic drug industry, which was once seen as a force that would drive down prices. Instead, many generic producers allowed themselves to be corrupted by entering into deals with brand-name manufacturers under which they were paid to delay introduction of low-cost substitutes. Pay for delay legal actions brought by federal agencies, state AGs, and private plaintiffs in class action lawsuits have yielded billions of dollars in settlements.

These cases have not yet made drug manufacturers paragons of competitive virtue, but they put continuing pressures on companies to end their abuses. That’s a lot more than what we can expect from TrumpRx and its dubious agreements with Big Pharma.

The DOJ’s Empty Boast

Since the beginning of Trump’s second term, the Justice Department has expended much of its energy bringing dubious cases against the president’s political foes and propping up the administration’s disastrous immigration policies.

At the same time, DOJ is trying to portray itself as an aggressive prosecutor of corporate crime. I previously wrote about the department’s exaggerated statements concerning its enforcement of the False Claims Act, the law used to bring civil actions against dishonest government contractors.

DOJ is also making Trump-style boasts about its track record with regard to criminal fraud cases. A recent press release about the performance of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section in 2025 was filled with terms such as “historic,” “recording-setting,” and “cutting edge.” The release is touting the fraud section’s Year in Review report, which is a bit less bombastic but is still prone to overstating DOJ’s accomplishments.

The fraud section’s four units, each of which prosecutes individuals as well as corporations, cover Foreign Corrupt Practices Act cases; Health Care Fraud; Health and Safety cases; and Market, Government, and Consumer Fraud.

Let’s focus on the FCPA criminal cases against corporations, which over the years have included some of the DOJ’s biggest prosecutions. When you get past the report’s self-congratulatory introductory material and reach the actual statistics, it turns out that DOJ handled a grand total of 3 FCPA cases against corporations during 2025.

Only one of the three cases was of any real significance: TIGO Guatemala, a subsidiary of Millicom International Cellular, paid $118 million to resolve an investigation of bribes paid to government officials in Guatemala.

In another of the cases, DOJ actually declined prosecution of Liberty Mutual for bribes paid to government officials in India because the company voluntarily disclosed the misconduct. Liberty Mutual’s sole penalty was the disgorgement of $4.7 million in profits.

The third FCPA case DOJ takes credit for has not yet been resolved. In fact, the action was originally filed in 2023 during the Biden Administration against an individual. In October 2025 DOJ added SGO Corporation, doing business as Smartmatic, as a defendant. The matter is pending.

This is hardly an impressive performance for a period of 12 months. According to data collected for Violation Tracker, the Biden Administration resolved 23 FCPA cases against corporations with a total of $3.4 billion in fines and settlements. That’s an average of about 6 cases and $850 million per year.

The Obama Administration resolved 73 cases against corporations with $6 billion in fines and settlements over its two terms, or an average of about 9 cases and $750 million per year.

Trump’s first term did even better, with an average of $1.9 billion in penalties per year. That figure was boosted by a $2.9 billion settlement with Goldman Sachs in 2020.

Clearly, Trump 2.0 has nothing to brag about in terms of FCPA criminal enforcement. This is just another example of how an administration that is devoted to the needs of business, especially those companies chummy with Trump, feels a need to give the false impression that it is tough on corporate misconduct.

A False Claim About False Claims

When the Trump Administration issues a press release about regulation, it is usually to boast about the number of rules it is trying to abolish or to announce a reduction in a corporate penalty imposed during the Biden Administration.

That’s why it was surprising recently to see a release from the Justice Department bragging that it collected more than $6.8 billion in settlements and judgments under the False Claims Act during the 2025 fiscal year, an amount it claimed was the highest annual total in the history of the FCA, which covers cases of fraud by government contractors.

To make sense of this announcement, we first need to recognize that it has no basis in fact. According to data collected for Violation Tracker, the FCA collections during FY 2025 were actually $2.06 billion, far less than the amount claimed by DOJ.

Admittedly, Violation Tracker covers only those cases brought against corporations and other business entities, both for-profit and non-profit, while excluding cases brought against individuals. Yet it is highly unlikely that cases against individuals would bring in more than twice the amount recovered from companies.

The DOJ may also be including cases that are still under appeal, whereas Violation Tracker covers only matters that are fully resolved.

The $2 billion total is far from the largest annual FCA figure in Violation Tracker. It is slightly above the average of the annual totals going back to FY 2001, which is earliest full year of coverage in the database, and well below the annual average of $2.6 billion for the past ten fiscal years. Putting aside those fiscal years overlapping presidential administrations, the FY2025 total is lower than the amounts during the last few years of the Obama Administration and each of those during the Biden era. It is also below the annual totals during all but one of the years of Trump’s first term.

It is far from surprising to see a branch of the Trump Administration play fast and loose with the facts. Yet it is unclear why a regulation-bashing, corporate-friendly administration would distort the truth to depict itself as more aggressive on enforcement than it actually is.

I can think of two reasons. The first is that False Claims Act cases fit neatly with the MAGA notion that the U.S. government is being taken advantage of. The contractors cheating federal agencies are seen as the domestic counterpart to the NATO countries that are supposedly mooching off Uncle Sam to cover their defense costs.

Even if the DOJ’s claim about FCA collections is highly inflated, it is true that the administration has been pursuing such cases aggressively at a time when many other regulatory agencies have been neutered. For example, the DOJ recently announced that Kaiser Permanente will pay $556 million to settle an FCA case alleging it engaged in a scheme to inflate its Medicare Advantage reimbursements by pressuring physicians to add invalid diagnoses to their records of patient visits. This is among the half dozen largest FCA settlements of the past decade.

A focus on FCA cases would be far from the worst thing to come from the MAGA grievance worldview. Corrupt contractors are, in fact, cheating the federal government and deserve to be prosecuted.

It is also possible, however, that the administration is setting the stage for a less palatable use of the FCA. In recent weeks there have been reports that DOJ is planning to use the FCA as the legal justification for bringing cases against contractors which do not completely conform with the administration’s position on diversity and inclusion. In other words, a company that retains any vestige of DEI while doing business with a federal agency would be considered to have cheated the government.

The FCA has a long history of serving as the key legal mechanism by which the federal government deals with corrupt contractors. Using false claims cases to attack DEI rather than financial fraud would be a betrayal of that history.

As with many other Trump policies, it is difficult to discern the administration’s real motivation in its FCA practices. We can only hope the DOJ focuses on the real culprits.

Unequal Justice

These are strange days at the Department of Justice. Attorney General Pam Bondi seems completely willing to do the bidding of Donald Trump, yet there have been press reports that he is unhappy she has not moved faster to prosecute his perceived political foes. The DOJ is not conducting a probe of the ICE officer who fatally shot a woman in Minneapolis, but it is investigating the political ties of the woman’s spouse. Investigations are also underway involving members of Congress who posted messages reminding servicemembers that they are not required to obey illegal orders.

Amid this insanity, it turns out there are people at the DOJ who are still doing their job in a normal way, particularly with regard to the prosecution of corporate crime. The Department just announced that it has reached a $556 million settlement with Kaiser Permanente to resolve allegations that the health system engaged in a scheme to inflate its Medicare Advantage reimbursements by pressuring physicians to add invalid diagnoses to their records of patient visits. Kaiser was said to have linked physician and facility financial bonuses and incentives to their cooperation with the scheme.

Kaiser is far from the only company to face accusations of cheating Medicare Advantage, the portion of Medicare most like an HMO. In 2023 insurer Cigna paid over $170 million to resolve a case involving diagnostic codes. In 2025 Seoul Medical Group paid $58 million to settle accusations it submitted false diagnosis codes for two spinal conditions to increase payments from Medicare Advantage.

UnitedHealth Group is being investigated by DOJ over similar issues and was the focus of a recent Senate Judiciary Committee report suggesting that the company abuses the Medicare Advantage provisions that provide higher payments relating to patients with certain costly medical conditions.

The Trump Administration is giving cases such as these a lot less attention than the purported fraud being committed by Somali-run child care centers in Minneapolis. Lately, Trump has been threatening to revoke the naturalized citizenship of those convicted of fraud.

Fraud is a non-violent financial crime, yet Trump is proposing a punishment that has previously been reserved for the likes of naturalized citizens who turned out to be Nazi war criminals. The penalties being imposed on healthcare companies are, by contrast, a lot milder. Some of the monetary amounts are substantial, but they can easily be absorbed by an operation such as Kaiser Permanente, which takes in over $100 billion a year in revenue.

If the healthcare penalties were to be truly comparable to those confronting Somali-Americans, those companies would be faced with the possibility of losing their corporate charters, or at least being debarred from doing business with federal agencies. This would be the functional equivalent of denaturalization.

Of course, the Trump Administration is not proposing anything like that for the corporate healthcare fraudsters. They are let off with what amounts to a slap on the wrist, while the Somalis are considered to deserve the harshest possible punishment. So much for equal justice.

Turning Regulators into the Anti-DEI Police

During the first year of Trump 2.0, most federal regulatory agencies have experienced savage budget cuts, deep staffing reductions, and abandonment of their core mission. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, teetering on the edge of extinction, was subjected to the indignity of having its investigators ordered to abide by a “humility pledge” requiring them to take a less aggressive stance toward corporate miscreants.

One of the few exceptions to this disempowerment has been seen at the portion of the Justice Department charged with enforcing the False Claims Act, the federal law most commonly used in prosecuting fraud by government contractors. While the volume of enforcement activity at most federal agencies has plummeted,  there has been a steady stream of announcements of resolved FCA cases. As shown in Violation Tracker, the DOJ has imposed $1.8 billion in penalties since Inauguration Day in about 200 actions, many involving fraud by healthcare providers.

Now, however, it appears that DOJ is moving in a different direction. There have been recent press reports saying that Justice is beginning to apply the FCA in an unusual and troubling manner.

Investigations are said to be underway in which major contractors which adopted diversity initiatives in their hiring and promotion are considered to have cheated the federal government. This is based on Trump’s dubious claim that DEI is illegal and his obsession with stamping out all remnants of it in both the public and the private sectors.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Google and Verizon are among the companies that have received DOJ demands for documents and information about their workplace programs. Other targeted companies were said to be industries ranging from automotive and pharmaceuticals to defense and utilities.

The Journal pointed out that false-claims investigations are usually begun when a whistleblower alerts the DOJ to contractor fraud. By contrast, these new anti-DEI probes are being initiated by political appointees—in other words, MAGA apparatchiks.

DOJ is not the only federal agency warping its mission to satisfy anti-DEI objectives. The Washington Post is reporting that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which has a proud history of combatting employer discrimination against women and people of color, is now soliciting complaints from white men who believe they are the victims of unfair treatment related to diversity initiatives.

This comes as the agency has drastically cut back the number of conventional lawsuits involving allegations of discrimination based on race and national origin.

Earlier, the Federal Communications Commission used its power over media mergers to pressure companies to abandon their DEI policies. Companies such as T-Mobile quickly complied.

What is next? Will the Department of Agriculture prosecute farmers for employing crop diversification on their land?

It is bad enough when the Trump Administration adheres to the usual Republican playbook of deregulation and feeble enforcement. It is worse when agencies act aggressively but do so in a way that betrays their mission. The conversion of regulatory agencies into the anti-DEI police undermines their legitimate enforcement role while stoking feelings of white victimhood that are so corrosive to our society.

The 2025 Corporate Rap Sheet

The regulatory enforcement system is one of the many things the second Trump Administration has thrown into chaos. The DOGE assault decimated staffing at many agencies. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been all but dismantled. Regulators such as the Environmental Protection Agency are abandoning key parts of their mission.  Independent agencies are losing their independence as Trump asserts a right to fire commissioners for no good reason. The Securities and Exchange Commission is dismissing investigations initiated under Biden in a manner that suggests cronyism. Convicted corporate criminals favored by Trump are receiving unjustified pardons.

At the same time, agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission, now headed by MAGA zealots, are using their powers to pressure or punish companies perceived to be enemies of the administration. The Justice Department, at the behest of Trump, is extracting substantial monetary settlements from universities facing dubious allegations that they tolerated anti-Semitism.

The news is not all bad. Portions of the federal regulatory and prosecutorial system continue to operate in a fairly normal manner. For example, False Claims Act cases involving federal contractor abuses are getting resolved on a regular basis.

Even more encouraging is the fact that state and local enforcement remain strong in much of the country, while private litigation in the form of class action lawsuits remains robust. Below are some of the key cases of the year collected for our Violation Tracker database, as well as some major foreign cases collected for Violation Tracker Global.

Amazon’s Cancellation Policies. The FTC has not been solely occupied with ideological warfare. In September the agency ordered Amazon to pay a $1 billion penalty and provide $1.5 billion in refunds to customers who had difficulty cancelling their Prime subscriptions.

Discover Bank’s Credit Card Practices. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, a bank regulator not usually associated with major enforcement actions, ordered Discover Bank, now owned by Capital One, to pay a $150 million penalty and $1.2 billion in restitution to millions of merchants. Discover collected improperly high interchange fees by misclassifying consumer credit cards as commercial.

Credit Suisse and Tax Evasion. Credit Suisse, now owned by UBS, pleaded guilty, entered into a non-prosecution agreement with the Justice Department for other charges, and was fined $510 million for maintaining accounts in Singapore on behalf of U.S. taxpayers who were using those accounts to evade U.S. taxes and reporting requirements.

Walgreen’s Invalid Opioid Prescriptions. In one of the year’s most significant False Claims Act cases, which also involved alleged violations of the Controlled Substances Act, Walgreens Boots Alliance reached a $300 million settlement with the DOJ to resolve allegations that it illegally filled millions of invalid prescriptions for opioids and other controlled substances and then sought payment for many of those invalid prescriptions from Medicare and other federal health care programs.

Hino Motors and Emissions Cheating. The biggest environmental case of the year was announced in January while Joe Biden was still in office. Hino Motors, a subsidiary of Toyota, paid criminal and civil penalties totaling $1.6 billion to resolve federal and California state allegations that the company submitted fraudulent emissions testing data for diesel engines imported into the United States.

Kimberly-Clark and Fraudulent Testing. Kimberly-Clark paid over $40 million in fines and compensation to resolve federal allegations that it conducted fraudulent testing on surgical gowns marketed as providing the highest level of protection against fluid and viruses.

Turning now to matters handled by state attorneys general and state regulatory agencies, there were more than 30 such cases which resulted in a penalty of $50 million or more. For example:

DuPont et al. and PFAS. DuPont, Chemours, and Corteva, all of which emerged from the old E.I. DuPont de Nemours and Co., together agreed to pay $2.6 billion to remedy long-standing contamination stemming from PFAS originating from four industrial sites in New Jersey.

Google and Privacy. The Texas Attorney General announced that Google would pay $1.4 billion to resolve allegations it unlawfully tracked and collected users’ private data regarding geolocation, incognito searches, and biometric data.

UnitedHealth Group and Unnecessary Insurance. HealthMarkets Inc., a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group, was ordered to pay $165 million in penalties and restitution in a case in which the Massachusetts Attorney General accused the company of misleading consumers into buying unnecessary health insurance products.

As for private litigation, more than 30 class action lawsuits with settlement amounts in excess of $50 million received final court approval this year. They include:

Blue Cross Blue Shield Anti-Competitive Practices. Blue Cross Blue Shield Association agreed to pay $2.8 billion to settle litigation brought by medical providers alleging that BCBS policies prevented its members from competing against each other.

Wage-Fixing. Tyson Foods paid $115 million and Perdue Farms paid $60 million to resolve allegations that they participated in a conspiracy among poultry companies to keep wage levels low.

Apple and Privacy. Apple agreed to pay $95 million to settle litigation alleging its Siri voice-activated software violated the privacy of users by eavesdropping on conversations.

The largest penalty outside the U.S. documented in Violation Tracker Global this year was the $3.4 billion fine imposed on Google by the European Commission for distorting competition in the advertising technology industry. The EC also brought large fines against Apple ($575 million) and Meta Platforms ($230 million).

Major penalties were seen in the area of privacy. The Irish Data Protection Commission fined TikTok $599 million, while the French privacy agency CNIL fined Google $378 million and e-commerce giant SHEIN Group $174 million.

The biggest environmental case outside the U.S. was a $140 million penalty against Thames Water in the UK for serious wastewater violations.

The main conclusion from all these cases is that misconduct on the part of large corporations remains pervasive around the world. In the United States, the future of regulatory enforcement at the federal level is uncertain, yet state and local regulators, along with plaintiffs’ lawyers, seek to fill the gap.

SCOTUS-Style Deregulation

In another example of how the conservative majority on the Supreme Court has become all too willing to throw out well-established law, the rightwing Justices strongly signaled they are ready to overturn a 90-year-old precedent that protects members of independent government agencies from being fired for no good reason by the president.

The case focuses on Donald Trump’s capricious removal of a Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission, but the eventual ruling will likely have significant consequences for many other independent bodies.

It is worth keeping in mind that many of these bodies are responsible for oversight of business activities Allowing a president like Trump to remove commission members without good cause will allow him to fill the bodies with individuals who are loyal to him and hostile to the mission of the agency. It amounts to backdoor deregulation.

Here are some of the key business regulators that would be affected.

Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC is the main agency responsible for enforcing laws against financial market manipulation. Violation Tracker documents more than 3,000 cases against companies brought by the agency since 2000, with total penalties of more than $45 billion. The agency has fined JPMorgan Chase 30 times and collected over $2 billion in penalties.

Federal Trade Commission. The FTC, with responsibilities relating to consumer protection and antitrust, has collected over $18 billion from corporations. Among the biggest cases are the $5 billion penalty paid by Facebook for violating a 2012 FTC order by deceiving users about their ability to control the privacy of their personal information; a $4 billion penalty paid by Volkswagen as part of the emissions cheating scandal; and the $2.5 billion penalty paid by Amazon for making it difficult for consumers to cancel their Prime subscriptions.

Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The CFTC, which regulates derivatives markets, has collected $32 billion in penalties in 830 cases against companies. The biggest cases include a $12.7 billion fraud judgement against FTX Trading Ltd. and Alameda Research and a $2.7 billion penalty against Binance Holdings.

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Before it was all but demolished by the Trump Administration this year, the CFPB collected nearly $18 billion in penalties against financial fraudsters. Wells Fargo paid over $4 billion in penalties in its bogus accounts scandal. Just about every other large bank was fined for a variety of harms perpetrated against their customers.

 Others include the Consumer Products Safety Commission, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and the National Labor Relations Board.

Donald Trump has not waited for a green light from the Supreme Court to initiate his attack on these regulatory agencies. Unlike traditional pro-business conservatives, Trump is not interested in simply weakening these bodies to benefit corporations. He is also weaponizing some of them to carry out his ideological agenda.

Ardent MAGA loyalists appointed to head bodies such as the FTC and the Federal Communications Commission are using their authority to put pressure on Trump’s foes and promote Trump’s pet issues. A ruling by the Supreme Court affirming the president’s absolute control over the agencies will serve to legitimize Trump’s hijacking of the bodies.

In arguing the administration’s case before the Court, Solicitor General claimed that giving the president absolute control over the agencies will make them “more accountable.”

The truth, of course, is the exact opposite. The conversion of independent agencies into pawns of a ruthless president will derail their public interest mission, much to the delight of rogue corporations everywhere.

Can Federal Corporate Investments Be Used for Good?

Donald Trump takes pleasure in getting institutions of all kinds to bend to his will. That includes major corporations. In a move that contradicts the usual deference the public sector in the U.S. shows to big business, Trump has forced a group of large companies to allow the federal government to acquire significant ownership stakes.

These investments are being justified in the name of national security. The Administration is expected to use its holdings to influence the operating and financial decisions of the companies, which operate in areas such as rare earth minerals, semiconductors, steel, and nuclear energy.

It remains to be seen exactly what that influence looks like, but the willingness of Trump to press the private sector to serve his idea of the national interest raises the question of whether he could also get the companies to better serve the public interest.

The companies in the federal portfolio includes some with a significant record of misconduct. Take U.S. Steel, which received approval to be acquired by Japan’s Nippon Steel only after the parties agreed to grant the administration a so-called golden share, giving it extensive power over the company’s policies.

As shown in Violation Tracker, U.S. Steel has racked up over $300 million in fines and settlements since 2000, including $250 million for environmental offenses and $80 million for competition-related offenses. The biggest portions of these came from a 2020 settlement with the Pennsylvania’s Allegheny County Health Department regarding air pollution violations and a 2014 class action suit regarding steel price-fixing.

Or take Intel, which Trump pressured to sell a 10 percent stake to the administration for about $9 billion. Intel has paid out about $112 million in penalties, most of which came from a 2015 settlement of private litigation alleging it conspired with other tech companies not to hire each other’s employees, thus suppressing salary levels. The company also paid $5 million to settle a suit accusing it of denying overtime pay and failing to provide meal and rest breaks.

Then there is Westinghouse Electric, which was pressed to enter into a partnership with the administration to build new nuclear power plants. In exchange for arranging financing and assisting with permits, the federal government would eventually receive a share of profits and would obtain a significant equity stake if Westinghouse, which is now majority-owned by Brookfield Corporation, is spun off.

Westinghouse Electric has received more than $5 million in penalties, including cases involving unfair labor practices, environmental offenses, workplace safety violations, and nuclear safety infractions.

The willingness of Trump to pressure corporations on decisions relating to investment raises the question of whether he would also use his leverage to address these types of misconduct. That is probably unlikely when it comes to environmental offenses, given his tendency to demonize the EPA. But what about practices such as wage theft and workplace safety deficiencies? Trump, after all, likes to portray himself as pro-worker.

There might also be some appeal in attacking price-fixing if it helps Trump given the impression he is addressing the affordability crisis. He has already made noises about cracking down on price-fixing in the beef industry.

Whatever Trump ends up doing, any steps he takes to use federal investments to change corporate behavior would serve as a precedent that a more enlightened president could put to better use.

Is the DOJ Serious About Investigating Beef Price-Fixing?

Apparently shaken by the Democratic gains in this month’s elections, Donald Trump has changed his tune on the economy. He still tries to get us to believe everything is marvelous, but at the same time he has rolled out a series of proposals designed to give the impression he is addressing the affordability crisis.

Most of these initiatives do not amount to much. The rollback of tariffs on some food products is easing an aspect of inflation Trump himself caused. The idea of getting banks to offer 50-year home mortgages would result in modest monthly savings for borrowers while causing them to pay much more in interest over the life of the loan and slow the rate at which they build equity in their homes. It is unclear whether the deals he has been making with pharmaceutical companies will result in significant cost reductions for consumers. The suggestion that Obamacare subsidies be replaced with payments to health savings accounts would result in the proliferation of junk insurance policies and financial ruin for those with serious health conditions.

What these initiatives also have in common is that they do not challenge corporate interests in any significant way. The one possible exception to this is Trump’s call for a probe of price fixing in the beef industry.

Earlier this month, Trump put out a social media post asking the Justice Department to “immediately begin an investigation of into the Meat Packing Companies who are driving up the price of Beef through illicit collusion, Price Fixing, and Price Manipulation.”

So far, so good. But Trump went on to refer to “Majority Foreign Owned Meat Packers,” suggesting that his real aim was xenophobic. A related White House press release was headlined “Trump Administration Cracks Down on Foreign-Owned Meat Packing Cartels.” The release went on to name what it called the Big Four meat packers—”JBS (Brazil), Cargill, Tyson Foods, and National Beef”—noting that two of them “are either foreign-owned or have significant foreign ownership and control.” (National Beef is controlled by Brazil’s Marfrig.)

It is not surprising that Trump is willing to criticize foreign corporate interests when the country involved has been the target of his scorn because of the supposed mistreatment of its former president Jair Bolsonaro, whose supporters mounted a January 6-style attack on the seat of government.

This is not to deny that the Brazilian beef giants have engaged in anti-competitive practices, yet there is no indication that their market behavior has been significantly worse than that of U.S.-based Cargill and Tyson Foods.

All four companies have been entangled in legal disputes over alleged collusion and price-fixing, yet those cases have involved private litigation rather than government enforcement actions. JBS has already paid out $160 million in settlements in class action suits filed in U.S. courts by different categories of beef purchasers.

Additional cases brought against JBS as well as Cargill, Tyson Foods, and National Beef have been consolidated in a multidistrict action now centered in federal court in Minnesota. The litigation alleges that from at least 2015 the four companies agreed among themselves to reduce live cattle purchasing and slaughter volumes for the purpose and effect of increasing their margins.

The plaintiffs charge that the companies accomplished and perpetuated this agreement through collusion at trade association conferences and industry events between executives and key employees, and through ensuing collusive relationships. This anti-competitive activity, the plaintiffs say, caused them to pay artificially and illegally inflated prices for boxed beef, which in turn elevated prices for consumers.

It is not at all clear that the Trump Administration will be as aggressive as the plaintiffs’ lawyers in attacking beef industry collusion. Attorney General Pam Bondi responded to Trump’s tweet by saying an investigation was already underway. Yet the DOJ’s Antitrust Division has been less than dynamic under Trump 2.0. No significant price-fixing action against a corporation has been resolved this year.

The seriousness of the Administration’s move against the big meatpackers was also put into question by the ridiculous statements of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent suggesting that high beef prices are the result of reductions in the supply of cattle caused by diseased animals brought into the country by illegal immigrants.

In the end, the DOJ’s beef investigation may turn out to be no more effective in addressing affordability than any of the other gimmicks Trump has offered.