U.S. enforcement trends: 2025 retrospective

More selective enforcement

The Trump Administration’s “Department of Government Efficiency” initiative last year drove a significant reduction in prosecutors, agents, and enforcement attorneys at all levels of seniority across the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and other federal agencies. We are seeing the impact on enforcement. The result has been a clear slowdown, with enforcement becoming more selective and aligned with the administration’s political priorities.   

In 2025, agencies pulled back from broad enforcement to focus on what agency leaders consider their core mandates. Antitrust fines fell sharply, and merging companies saw fewer regulatory roadblocks. The SEC signaled a decreased enforcement volume tailored to priority areas such as insider trading and fraud. The DOJ’s Criminal Division deemphasized corporate liability in favor of a narrower targeting of individual accountability. Certain industries—such as AI and crypto—have avoided serious scrutiny from any agency.

Geopolitical competition as an enforcement priority

National security—and competition with China in particular—increasingly drives U.S. enforcement priorities. As an example, the DOJ imposed first-of-their-kind sanctions on foreign beneficiaries of trade secret theft, potentially signaling a shift from civil tort actions toward a national security enforcement framework. The first major indictment for price-fixing in a decade was accompanied by a press announcement focusing on geopolitical competition, framing the U.S. consumer as a victim of Chinese commercial policies. 

Tariff evasion and trade fraud have been elevated to the Criminal Division’s top ten white-collar priorities and a new Trade Fraud Task Force has been established in partnership with Homeland Security, while a budgetary increase for the Bureau of Industry and Security within the Department of Commerce is likely not only to bolster export control monitoring but also to augur future enforcement actions to disrupt illicit procurement networks.   

Recalibrated anti-corruption enforcement

Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) enforcement has been sharply curtailed. The new administration first paused new FCPA cases to align enforcement with foreign policy objectives, and the DOJ subsequently issued new guidelines directing prosecutors toward “serious misconduct” with a more than tangential U.S. nexus. Enforcement is now oriented toward safeguarding U.S. competitiveness and rooting out corruption in strategic sectors such as defense, intelligence, and critical infrastructure. 

A new framework for corporate self-disclosure

In March 2026, the DOJ released its first department-wide criminal Corporate Enforcement Policy, superseding nearly all division-specific policies except antitrust. Under this framework, companies that voluntarily self-disclose misconduct, fully cooperate, and timely remediate can secure a declination from prosecution. Even companies that fail to timely self-report but do cooperate and remediate may still benefit from leniency and non-prosecution agreements. This policy formalizes longstanding incentives for corporate self-policing and creates a more transparent set of expectations for companies navigating enforcement risk.

With these developments taken together, the enforcement picture is one of a leaner, more politically directed regime, increasingly tethered to national interests.