The United States has slumped to 29th place in global corruption rankings, its worst performance since 2012, trailing smaller economies including the Bahamas, Uruguay, and Lithuania in a humiliating slide that campaigners say reflects a collapse in trust in American institutions.

The latestCorruption Perceptions IndexfromTransparency Internationalscored the US at just 64 out of 100, down from previous years and tied with a Caribbean tax haven most Americans couldn't find on a map.

For a nation that lectures the world about democratic values, it stings. And the trend shows no sign of stopping. Transparency International warned it's 'very concerned about the situation in the United States' as the Trump administration pauses investigations into corporate foreign bribery and weakens enforcement mechanisms that once kept questionable behaviour in check.

Twenty-ninth. That's where America stands now amongst 182 nations measured by perceived public-sector corruption.

Behind Barbados. Behind Lithuania. Level with the Bahamas.

The ranking isn't based on documented corruption cases. It measures perception — what independent experts and businesspeople think when they look at a country's public sector. But here's the thing. Perception drives investment. Drives confidence. Drives whether people believe the system works.

And right now, fewer people believe it does.

The score has been sliding for years, but recent policy shifts have accelerated the decline. The Trump administration curtailed enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the main tool for prosecuting corporate bribery abroad. Investigations into American companies paying off foreign officials? Paused. It weakened the Foreign Agent Registration Act, making it harder to track foreign influence operations. Critics say that sends a message: questionable behaviour gets a pass.

Anti-corruption advocates aren't mincing words. Soft enforcement, they argue, normalises the behaviour you're supposed to be policing. When companies see prosecutors backing off, they take note. So do investors trying to decide where to put their money.

There's also the foreign aid cuts. Programmes that supported civil society and transparency efforts globally have been slashed. The worry? America loses credibility when it stops funding the very systems it claims to champion.

Source: International Business Times UK