"America once led the anti-corruption fight. Now self-dealing Trump is kleptocrats' role model," 31 Oct 2019

The United States has long understood that corruption has profoundly corrosive and transnational ripple effects. Where there is impunity for official corruption, government itself becomes a means for the elite to enrich itself and silence its critics... Human Rights Watch, the World Bank and others have documented how corruption often disproportionately harms the poor, denying them access to basic rights such as health, education and fair trials... Recognizing this, the United States has pioneered groundbreaking efforts to curb corruption through its laws, enforcement and diplomacy.

... [The US] has retreated from this role under Trump... The Dodd-Frank transparency provision hasn’t yet gone into effect because Congress, with Trump’s support, repealed the federal rule creating the disclosure requirement and has yet to propose a replacement. The Trump administration also withdrew the United States from the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative... [and Trump] has regularly used the presidency in ways that benefit his businesses... Beyond that, Trump’s flagrant self-dealing, by echoing the language of kleptocrats, is itself a major blow to the fight against global corruption.