Illegal logging is one of the world’s most lucrative environmental crimes, producing as much as 30 percent of all timber traded globally and worth up to $152 billion annually. At this scale, where timber thieves can’t easily cloak their operations in stealth, the enterprise relies on bribery, corruption, and money laundering. These are forbidden under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), which puts the responsibility on regulated corporations to keep their supply chains clean.
The FCPA could put a big dent in illegal logging, but on February 10, 2025, President Trump ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to stop enforcing the law. This is bad news for the Organic Consumers Association's campaign to stop avocado-driven deforestation in Mexico and it's unleashing a larger corporate crime spree.
TAKE ACTION ON ILLEGAL DEFORESTATION: Tell Congress to Stop The Corporate Crime Spree!
Mexico’s most fragile forests are being invaded, burned by arsonists, and illegally logged–all to serve our insatiable appetite for guacamole. Avocado plantations are driving deforestation in Mexico, especially in Michuacán and Jalisco where the drug cartels have cut themselves in on the “green gold” rush. Not even the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve is safe. Deforestation is expected to double by 2050 if the region’s avocado plantations continue to expand. U.S. companies like Fresh Del Monte Produce are cashing in while turning a blind eye to the devastation caused by the avocado boom.
Climate Rights International (CRI) broke this story in its 2023 report, “Unholy Guacamole: Deforestation, Water Capture, and Violence Behind Mexico’s Avocado Exports to the U.S.. Since then, CRI’s efforts, aided by lawsuits we brought with Richman Law & Policy against the avocado importers, have resulted in three major companies making commitments to stop deforestation. On February 7, 2025, Calavo Growers, Mission Produce, and West Pak Avocado pledged not to buy avocados grown on recently cleared land. (Del Monte hasn’t budged and continues to defend itself against OCA’s legal action.)
This promising development is only as good as the enforcement of the companies’ deforestation-free pledge–and that’s where the problem of bribery comes in.
When CRI first launched its Unholy Guacamole campaign, the hope was that the Biden Administration would help with enforcement. Biden’s Ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar publicly stated that avocados grown in illegally cleared orchards should be blocked from the market in February 2024, but the administration didn’t release a policy framework on how to do this (for all agricultural imports) until December when it was clear that the framework was heading straight for Trump’s shredder.
Without a U.S. partner, enforcement responsibilities fall on Michoacán Governor Alfredo Ramirez Bedolla’s “Pro-Forest Avocado” program. Will the avocado companies try to bribe their way into compliance? We don’t have any evidence that the governor is corrupt, but we can’t be so sure about the avocado companies–one of them, at least.
Calavo disclosed to the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice on January 31, 2024, that its operations in Mexico raised potential issues under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a delicate way of admitting that it’s been bribing Mexican officials. In April 2024, the company volunteered that it had spent $5 million over six months investigating itself for FCPA violations, in anticipation of potential actions that could be taken against it by the SEC, the Department of Justice, or Mexican authorities.
With these uncertainties, it’s best to buy certified organic and fair trade avocados. Equal Exchange maintains safeguards and auditing to keep deforestation out of its supply change.
A likelihood of continued deforestation is just one impact of Trump refusing to enforce one law. Trump probably didn’t even mean to give Calavo this “Get Out of Jail Free” card. To our knowledge, no one at Calavo poured money into Trump’s political action committees or had friends in the Cabinet to do favors for them. As far as we can tell, Calavo just got lucky.
Others are getting special favors.
Based on Rick Claypool’s March 4, 2025, report for Public Citizen, “Corporate Clemency: How Trump Is Halting Enforcement Against Corporate Lawbreakers,” it appears that the intended beneficiaries of Trump’s decision to give businesses engaged in bribery a break were Pfizer and Toyota.
Pfizer is a repeat violator of the FCPA. In 2012, when it paid $60 million in fines for engaging in bribery in Bulgaria, China, Croatia, Czech Republic, Italy, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Serbia, it was “permanently enjoined from further violations of the FCPA.”
And yet, Pfizer is back under FCPA scrutiny, this time for misconduct in Mexico and China.
Pfizer has embedded itself within the Trump Administration.
During the last two years of the first Trump Presidency, 2019-2020, one of the people lobbying Pfizer for Trump was Jeff Miller. Then, after the 2024 election, he became the finance chair of Trump’s inaugural committee, to which Pfizer donated $1 million.
During the 2024 election year, one of the lawyers representing Pfizer was Pam Bondi at the law firm Panza, Mauer & Maynard. Then, Bondi became Trump’s attorney general, responsible for deciding whether and how to pursue current FCPA investigations.
Toyota, another million-dollar donor to Trump's inaugural committee, has also been given a free-pass to continue bribing foreign governments. It paid an $18 million to bribe to Thai Supreme Court justices to overturn a court ruling that it owed $320 million to the Thai government for evading import taxes.
TAKE ACTION: Tell Congress to Stop The Corporate Crime Spree By Requiring Enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act!