For decades, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) has been the gold standard for corporate anti-bribery compliance around the world. But recent changes in the United States’ enforcement policy and a line of Supreme Court decisions narrowing the federal corruption statutes suggest this role is changing. However, a shift in the trajectory of U.S. enforcement does not signal a global retreat from anti-corruption enforcement, but rather a widening enforcement gap between jurisdictions. That gap is important for companies operating internationally, as reduced exposure in one jurisdiction does not reduce liability in another.

The Doctrinal Narrowing in the United States

Two developments have altered the American position. The first is executive. Executive Order 14209 of February 10, 2025 suspended new FCPA investigations and enforcement actions, deeming the statute to have been stretched beyond reasonable limits to the detriment of American competitiveness. Its suspension was lifted in June 2025, but the U.S. government’s priorities shifted; only conduct that posed a direct threat to U.S. economic interests or involved transnational criminal organizations would be a priority for enforcement.

The second development is judicial. From McDonnell v. United States to Snyder v United States, the U.S. Supreme Court has consistently refused to read federal corruption statutes broadly. Its reasoning has been based on the vagueness of statutes, which leave the limits of criminal liability unclear. In such circumstances, the Court has become unwilling to allow prosecutors to provide their own broad definition of corruption without explicit statutory authorization. Snyder held that 18 U.S.C. Section 666 covers bribes to state and local officials but not gratuities given in appreciation of past acts.

To extend this reasoning to the FCPA is legally significant. Section 666 deals with state and local officials and provides no textual guidance on what distinguishes permissible payments from culpable ones, which is why the Court had to build a distinction through interpretation. The FCPA, 15 U.S. Code § 78dd-1 et seq., is different. It makes an explicit exception for facilitating payments made to expedite a routine governmental action. It defines that term through a list of illustrations that does not include any decision to award or continue business. The text of the statute, therefore, draws, unlike the text of section 666, the line that Snyder had been forced to derive. A narrowing of the FCPA along these lines is plausible. However, it would require courts to read a textual scheme that anticipates the bribery and gratuity distinction rather than one that is silent on it.

Recalibration Rather than Retreat

This shift should not be overstated. The FCPA remains in force, and only Congress can repeal it. Its limitation period means that conduct left unprosecuted during the present enforcement cycle remains actionable in a future one. The Securities and Exchange Commission also retains civil enforcement authority, which the executive order does not affect.

Another issue worth considering is the Foreign Extortion Prevention Act, passed by Congress in December 2023. This law targets the demand side of foreign bribery by making it a punishable offense to accept or solicit bribes from domestic firms. The effect of the FEPA and the changes to policies for enforcing the FCPA suggest that the United States pursues an inconsistent approach to foreign bribery. By narrowing the scope of liability for American firms, the revised FCPA policies create an opening to accuse foreign officials of accepting bribes, thus shifting the focus from the givers to the takers of bribes. In other words, U.S. diplomacy will be changing the grounds of the legal confrontations and shifting away from prosecuting American multinationals.

Elsewhere, Standards Are Advancing

While enforcement narrows in America, it is expanding in other jurisdictions, and several impose obligations considerably stricter than the FCPA does.

The UK Bribery Act 2010 is the clearest example. Its Section 7 offense of failing to prevent bribery holds a commercial organization liable where an associated person bribes on its behalf, without any requirement to prove intent on the part of senior management. The only defense is to show adequate procedures designed to prevent such conduct, and the offense reaches any organization carrying on business in the United Kingdom, whatever its place of incorporation. The act also recognizes no facilitation payments exception, so conduct falling within the FCPA carve-out may still be criminal under English law.

The European Union has adopted the same approach. The Anti-Corruption Directive of the EU was adopted on April 29, 2026 and came into force the next month. It harmonized the definitions of corruption offences and introduced the obligation for companies to establish a system of organization and control, failing which they can be subject to penalties, including the confiscation of proceeds of corruption. In Brazil, a similar law (Clean Company Act, Law No. 12,846/2013) has been in force for more than 10 years and has also introduced strict corporate liability for corruption offences committed in the company’s interests, without the need to prove the corrupt intent of the persons involved.

India illustrates the same pattern among jurisdictions implementing the United Nations Convention Against Corruption. Having ratified the Convention in 2011, India amended the Prevention of Corruption Act 1988 in 2018 to make bribe-giving a standalone offense and to impose liability on commercial organizations whose associates bribe on their behalf.

Divergence and the Compliance Baseline

All of these regimes taken together put companies in a significantly more precarious position than the FCPA alone does. The strict liability of the Brazilian statute, the lack of an intent requirement in Section 7 of the Bribery Act, and the supervisory liability risk created by the EU Directive each has the potential to expose a company to liability that does not depend on the discretion of U.S. prosecutors. A company that is using the DOJ’s current enforcement priorities as a benchmark for its compliance program is actually adopting the easiest standard to meet, not the most challenging.

The practical consequence is that the global compliance baseline is no longer dictated from Washington, but increasingly in the statute books of the jurisdictions where companies operate, source goods, employ people, and contract with governments. The relevant question is no longer whether conduct would attract the attention of U.S. prosecutors, but whether it complies with the law of every jurisdiction in which the company does business. A change in enforcement policy in one capital does not change the law in London, Brussels, Brasília, or New Delhi.

Mohamed Arafa is a professor of law at Alexandria University Faculty of Law (Egypt) and an adjunct professor of law and the Clarke Initiative Visiting Scholar at Cornell Law School, Krishraj Singh Sikarwar is a third-year BBA-LLB student at the School of Business & Law, Navrachana University, Vadodara, India.