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Trump Guts Enforcement, Greenlights Corporate Crime Spree
The Trump administration has dropped or halted more than one out of five prominent investigations into and enforcement actions against corporations in just its first six weeks in office, according to a new report from Public Citizen. Whole categories of corporate crime enforcement have come screeching to a halt just weeks into President Donald Trump’s second term, the report found.
“Trump is handing out ‘get out of jail free’ cards to corporate lawbreakers,” said Rick Claypool, a research director for Public Citizen and author of the report. “The consequences for the public when corporations face a diminished threat of enforcement are disastrous. Meanwhile, honest businesses that are not Trump administration insiders – or that refuse to play along with the ultra-MAGA ideological agenda – may face serious disadvantages from Trump’s politicized approach to enforcement.”
The Trump administration has already halted or moved to dismiss enforcement investigations and cases against 89 corporations. This includes:
- All 42 cases at the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau;
- At least 20 investigations and cases under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act;
- At least 15 cases brought by the Civil Rights and Environment and Natural Resource divisions at the U.S. Department of Justice;
- At least six Equal Employment Opportunity Commission cases defending transgender and gender non-conforming workers from workplace abuse and discrimination; and
- At least seven cases at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission against cryptocurrency corporations.
At least 34 corporations facing enforcement actions collectively contributed more than $34 million to Trump’s inaugural festivities. These 34 corporations are facing a total of 60 separate federal investigations and lawsuits. The corporations facing the greatest number of investigations and cases are Tesla (eight), Amazon (seven), Pfizer (five), Wells Fargo (four), SpaceX (four), and UnitedHealthcare (four).
“Donald Trump, Pam Bondi, and Kash Patel bloviate about how tough they are on crime,” said Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, “but the reality is the Trump administration by its actions is inviting a corporate crime spree. Not only does the wholesale abandonment of cases against alleged corporate wrongdoers let bad actors off the hook, it invites – and virtually guarantees – a surge in consumer rip offs, endangerment of workers, poisoning of the air and water, discriminatory employment practices, and more.”
Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization that champions the public interest in the halls of power. We defend democracy, resist corporate power and work to ensure that government works for the people - not for big corporations. Founded in 1971, we now have 500,000 members and supporters throughout the country.
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As Economic Warnings Flash Red, Trump Plows Forward With Massive Tax Hike on Ordinary Americans
After a monthlong delay, Trump administration tariffs on Mexican and Canadian imports went into effect Tuesday.
Mar 04, 2025
As the Trump administration's purge of federal workers continues and tariffs imposed on key U.S. trade partners Mexico and Canada take effect Tuesday, multiple economic indicators are warning of potential pain ahead.
On Monday, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta released an estimate for GDP performance in the first quarter of 2025, which showed an economic contraction of 2.8%. The "GDPNow" estimate is a model-based projection that is not an official forecast from the Atlanta Fed, but it does paint a different economic picture from just a few weeks ago, when the same model-based projection estimated growth of almost 3% in early February.
"Basically unprecedented for a new administration to inherit a strong economy and immediately tank it as both businesses and consumers internalize its agenda," wrote Bharat Ramamurti, a former deputy director at the National Economic Council, in response to the prediction from the Atlanta Fed.
Stocks also tumbled Monday after Trump announced that 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico would go into effect the next day. Trump also reiterated that the U.S. would impose an additional 10% tariff on China, on top of 10% tariffs that were already in effect.
Meanwhile there are also signs that consumer confidence is declining. The research group the Conference Board released its Consumer Confidence Index for February on Tuesday, which showed the largest monthly decline in consumer confidence since August 2021. "Respondents to the board's survey expressed concern over inflation with a significant increase in mentions of trade and tariffs, the board said," according to The Associated Press. The retail giant Target said Tuesday that consumer confidence is waning, according to CNN.
In a video discussing the Atlanta Fed's "GDPNow" estimate, journalist Krystal Ball reminded listeners that billionaire Elon Musk, the man Trump has deputized to help oversee cuts to the federal spending and bureaucracy, said that the work of his Department of Government Efficiency would cause pain. Musk in October 2024 said that then yet-to-be-created body's work would "necessarily involve some temporary hardship," according to Vox.
The Trump administration has so far already cut tens of thousands of workers, but even if Trump successfully carried out his proposed mass firings of probationary workers (which a judge recently said were likely illegal), possibly impacting 200,000 people, that "on its own, is not recessionary," according to economist Ernie Tedeschi, director of economics at the Yale University Budget Lab, who was interviewed by CNBC.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' February employment situation report will be released on Friday, and economist Dean Baker, who works for the left-leaning Center for Economic and Policy Research, wrote Tuesday that the numbers "are not not likely to pick up much of the effect of the DOGE cuts." That's partly because the data will not capture the time period when many of the cuts went into effect, according to Baker.
The impact of tariffs, however, is more certain. China, Mexico, and Canada account for over 40% of U.S. imports, and key goods imported from the three countries include crude petroleum, cars, computers, telephones, and car parts and accessories, according to the The New York Times.
Tariffs are essentially a tax on imported goods that economists say are largely passed on to consumers.
According to analysis released in early February, the Peterson Institute for International Economics found that the tariffs that were previously announced but went into effect on Tuesday constitute the "the largest tax increase in at least a generation."
Taking into account the 25% tariffs on goods from Canada (aside from the lower rate for Canadian energy) and Mexico, and the 10% increase in tariffs on imports from China, "the direct cost of these actions to the typical, or median, U.S. household would be a tax increase of more than $1,200 a year."
After the Trump administration announced the tariffs on Mexico and China, which the White House said were being implemented to pressure the three countries into halting the flow of fentanyl and immigrants, Trump agreed in February to delay their imposition on Canada and Mexico for a month after those countries announced concessions.
The left-leaning economist Paul Krugman called the tariffs on Mexico and Canada, two countries with whom Trump once helped negotiate a free trade deal, "a profoundly self-destructive move."
"It will impose huge, possibly devastating costs on U.S. manufacturing, while significantly raising the cost of living—without any visible justification," he wrote.
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With Dropped Enforcement, Trump Accused of 'Inviting a Corporate Crime Spree'
"President Trump talks 'tough on crime,' but his administration is once again betraying a preference for going soft on corporations that break the law."
Mar 04, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump "is handing out 'get out of jail free' cards to corporate lawbreakers," declared Rick Claypool, author of a Tuesday report about the administration ending probes and enforcement actions against dozens of companies.
Claypool is a research director for the watchdog Public Citizen. His report "covers 429 separate investigations and cases against 361 corporations over alleged lawbreaking—including at least 25 involving allegations of criminal misconduct."
During the first six weeks since the inauguration, the researcher found, the Trump administration halted or moved to dismiss actions against 89 corporations—or 25% of the companies in Public Citizen's tracker of prominent cases.
"The consequences for the public when corporations face a diminished threat of enforcement are disastrous," Claypool warned in a statement. "Meanwhile, honest businesses that are not Trump administration insiders—or that refuse to play along with the ultra-MAGA ideological agenda—may face serious disadvantages from Trump's politicized approach to enforcement."
As his report, Corporate Clemency, details, the beneficiaries of the recent dismissals are:
- All 42 corporations facing Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) cases and investigations (seven dismissals have been sought so far);
- Twenty corporations facing Department of Justice (DOJ) and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) cases and investigations into possible Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violations;
- Eight corporations facing DOJ Civil Rights Division cases and investigations (one dismissal, a case against Elon Musk's SpaceX, has been sought so far);
- Seven corporations facing DOJ Environment and Natural Resources Division cases and investigations;
- Seven cryptocurrency corporations facing SEC cases and investigations, five of which the Trump administration has filed to dismiss; and
- Six employers facing Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) cases for discrimination against transgender and nonbinary workers, which the Trump administration has filed to dismiss.
"Additionally, firings of National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) members and EEOC commissioners mean these regulators lack the quorum needed for finalizing enforcement decisions, including NLRB cases against 100 corporations included in the tracker," the report explains. "There are nearly 27,000 open NLRB cases in total."
The corporations that began the Trump administration with the greatest number of probes or cases in the Public Citizen tracker are Musk's Tesla (eight) and SpaceX (four), billionaire Jeff Bezos' Amazon (seven), Big Pharma's Pfizer (five), banking giant Wells Fargo (four), and the insurance company UnitedHealthcare (four).
The report highlights that "of the 361 corporations facing federal enforcement actions, 56 have close ties with the Trump administration," 17 of which "are benefiting from the enforcement pauses that have halted investigations and cases."
The document also identifies 34 companies that collectively gave at least $34 million toward Trump inaugural festivities.
Amazon and Pfizer each gave $1 million, as did many others: Adobe, Apple, AT&T, Boeing, Coinbase, ExxonMobil, Ford Motor Company, General Motors, Goldman Sachs, Google, Hyundai and its affiliate, Johnson & Johnson, Kraken, Lockheed Martin, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Stanley Black & Decker, Stellantis, and Toyota.
Ripple, Robinhood Markets, and Uber gave even more, while Abbott Laboratories, Bank of America, Citibank, Coca-Cola, CoreCivic, Ericsson, Hewlett Packard, and Syngenta gave less or an undisclosed amount.
Apple and OpenAI's contributions came from the companies' chief executives, Tim Cook and Sam Altman, while Uber had a corporate donation and one from CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. All three of them appear on the report's list of "Big Tech oligarchs seeking corporate clemency from the Trump administration," alongside Musk, Bezos, TikTok's Shou Zi Chew, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta—which owns Instagram and Facebook—and Sundar Pichai of Alphabet, the parent company of Google.
"President Trump talks 'tough on crime,'" the report says, "but his administration is once again betraying a preference for going soft on corporations that break the law."
Public Citizen co-president Robert Weissman similarly called out not only Trump—who was convicted of 34 felonies—but also Attorney General Pam Bondi and Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Kash Patel, who all "bloviate about how tough they are on crime."
"The reality is the Trump administration by its actions is inviting a corporate crime spree," Weissman said in a statement. "Not only does the wholesale abandonment of cases against alleged corporate wrongdoers let bad actors off the hook, it invites—and virtually guarantees—a surge in consumer rip offs, endangerment of workers, poisoning of the air and water, discriminatory employment practices, and more."
Public Citizen's analysis comes amid mounting alarm over Trump's so-called Department of Government Efficiency, led by Musk, the richest person on Earth. As Common Dreamsreported Monday, the Center for Biological Diversity noted in a new lawsuit that Trump's executive order establishing the government-gutting initiative requires all federal agencies to form DOGE teams.
The center's complaint stresses that "Mr. Musk and other billionaire and tech executives working with DOGE stand to benefit personally and financially from the DOGE teams' work, including by securing government contracts, slashing environmental rules that apply to their companies, and reducing the government's regulatory capacity and authority, including by targeting specific agencies, statutes, and spending decisions that affect their businesses."
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Trump Set to Install Anti-Union Attack Dog as Director of Key Labor Office
One watchdog group warned that Elisabeth Messenger is "a real ideologue" whose selection underscores the Trump administration's hostility to organized labor.
Mar 04, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump is reportedly expected to pick the former head of an anti-union organization that supports so-called "right-to-work" laws to lead a key office within the Department of Labor, where the administration is working to gut enforcement efforts against lawbreaking employers.
Citing two unnamed sources, HuffPostreported Monday that Elisabeth Messenger, former CEO of Americans for Fair Treatment (AFFT), is set to become director of the Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS), whose purpose is to promote "labor-management transparency by making available reports showing unions' financial condition and employers' expenditures for their activities in persuading workers during union organizing campaigns."
HuffPost noted that "as the head of OLMS, Messenger would be charged with making sure unions, as well as anti-union consultants, make lawful disclosures to the government about their work."
Bob Funk, director of the watchdog group LaborLab, told HuffPost that Messenger is "a real ideologue" and her selection signals that the Trump administration will likely "go after not just public-sector unions but worker centers, too."
The outlet observed that AFFT "promotes right-to-work laws and advises public-sector workers like teachers on how to opt out of paying union dues."
Elisabeth Messenger, former CEO of the anti-union group "Americans for Fair Treatment," will be tasked with making sure anti-union consultants disclose their work.
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— LaborLab (@laborlab.bsky.social) March 3, 2025 at 4:59 PM
After posturing as a champion of American workers on the campaign trail, Trump kicked off his second White House term with what one observer described as "rapid-fire anti-worker actions," including mass firings of federal employees and the termination of key labor officials.
One of the fired officials, former National Labor Relations Board Chair Gwynne Wilcox, is suing Trump in federal court arguing her termination was illegal.
News that Trump is poised to install Messenger at the helm of OLMS comes roughly two weeks after former Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-Ore.), the president's pick to lead the Labor Department, vowed during her Senate confirmation hearing to defend "right-to-work laws" and said she no longer supports pro-union legislation that would dramatically weaken them.
That legislation, the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, is set to be reintroduced Tuesday by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a group of congressional Democrats, and Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.).
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