Corruption in the US – Tariffs again, less oversight more chaos
Chaos and confusion are part of the corruption toolkit and over the weekend we were reminded again that the US tariff mess can give corrupt actors the opportunity to mask corrupt behavior. And, thankfully, there continues to be more news around this. ABC News highlighted this as Senator Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., was on “This Week, and told co-anchor Jonathan Karl that Trump has no tariff policy or plan to implement it. “Look, there is no tariff policy. It's just all chaos and corruption. That's all we have going on," Warren said, and she further went on to say "They talk about an emergency. They've got a 10% tariff on basically every country in the world, everywhere. What's the emergency that we have with Belgium or the emergency we have with South Korea?”
As an anti-corruption practitioner know confusion provides a ripe environment for corruption, which I wrote about last week. And the tariffs continue to be good news for Trump’s supporters. The Lever noted, “Already, Trump has suspended the tariffs for electronics and is considering exempting cars as well — good news for Trump super PAC donor Elon Musk and Apple CEO Tim Cook, who personally delivered $1 million to Trump’s inauguration.” What is worse this time, versus Trump’s first term, is that at that time there was an independent Commerce Department’s inspector general (IG), whose role was to audit and investigate wrongdoing. In 2019 the IG found that “a lack of transparency” around Trump officials’ handling of steel and aluminum tariffs “contributes to the appearance of improper influence in decision-making for tariff exclusion requests.” Among other concerns, the office found zero records of what transpired in 100-plus meetings between officials and companies.
What does this mean? That without true oversight, which presently looks like it doesn’t exist, there needs to be oversight by our legislative bodies, civil society, and journalists. We will all be watching and providing accounts of what is happening. For those of us who are used to working in corrupt environments, we are prepared to provide oversight, transparency and accountability.
Links:
https://www.levernews.com/trump-relaunches-his-tariff-corruption-game/