It goes without saying that Trump now oversees the most corrupt White House the U.S. has ever seen. But it would be a mistake to say that he and his White House are acting alone. Indeed, in the latest assault on America’s anti-corruption edifice—perhaps the most destructive effort yet—the White House is taking a back seat, and is instead looking to Republican allies in Congress to undo the single most important anti-corruption step the U.S. has taken in years.
Many industries accelerated America’s transformation into an offshore behemoth, including real estate and private equity, both of which enjoyed decades-long loopholes in basic anti–money laundering provisions. But there was one industry in particular that served as the bedrock for all of these laundering networks: shell companies. Thanks to America’s fractured corporate formation landscape, the federal government had no say in how U.S. shell companies were formed—or what kind of information was needed when setting up a shell company.
It wasn’t simply autocrats and their oligarchic proxies who benefited from these anonymous shells. Wealthy Americans, those looking to secretly influence American politics, those searching for ways to covertly inject finance into U.S. elections—all of them profited from this rank secrecy.
It’s difficult to overstate just how momentous this new legislation was. For the first time in decades, the U.S. was no longer the leading font of anonymous shell companies. The best days of U.S. offshoring appeared behind us.
Still, the law technically remained, as did the related statutes of limitations—and the potential for a future administration to go after malefactors still setting up anonymous shells. Trump could announce that the law was a dead letter, but that didn’t mean he could repeal it fully.
All of this is a staggering gift to cartels, Chinese money-laundering networks, Iranian proxies, and others who have relied on anonymous U.S. shells—all of whom Republicans supposedly stand against. The repeal effort “ignores clear warnings from American national security and law enforcement officials,” as Transparency International’s Gary Kalman said, all of which “risks turning the United States back into a place where criminals and foreign adversaries can more easily fund their networks and hide dirty money in plain sight.”
In the service of aiding those wealthy donors, Republicans pushing for the bill’s effective repeal are willing to aid Russian gun-runners, terrorist financiers, transnational criminal syndicates, and others who need all of the anonymity that states like Delaware, Nevada, Wyoming, and others perfected. “Introducing this bill isn’t about lowering costs for small businesses: it’s about Congress choosing to protect the interests of wealthy donors over the safety of their communities,” Erica Hanichak, deputy director of the FACT Coalition, said.
All of which is to say: Trump may be the leading wrecking ball destroying America’s anti-corruption credentials. But he is hardly alone. Thanks to congressional Republicans, Trump—and corrupt actors around the world, salivating at the chance to turn the U.S. back into their own personal dirty-money laundromat, can finally restore an American kleptocracy in which only oligarchs, grifters, and criminal kingpins benefit, while everyone else pays the price.
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