The law which prevented US corporations from using bribery to win business in other nations was recently rescinded on exactly this basis: US corporations are hamstrung unless they can buy their wins. Superficially, this makes sense, and that was all that was offered to justify the change. That guardrail was dumb! But like most things, there are reasons to not do this which were completely ignored.

For instance, a company may not desire to hand out cash to win business; previously, when solicited they could say, "Sorry, it is illegal for me to do so." Now there is no such shield.

Second, in many cases it will be two or more US businesses trying to win business in some other country, and the change of the law only makes it more expensive for those two companies, as they now must play a game of bribery chicken to win the business.

Third, the US loves to claim it is is a democracy and is working to spread democracy. By legitimizing bribes paid to foreign officials over the interests of their voting populace, we are undermining democracy in those countries (not that anyone who pays attention believes that the US's foreign policy is anything but self interested and divorced from spreading democratic ideals).

> guardrails only serve to hurt us in the long run, at least at this pivotal point in time.

What evidence led you to that conclusion?

Look up "alignment tax".

Underlying this perspective is the assumption that this is a uni-lineal race, and the end of that race must be arrived at first, and what lies at the end of that race is in the common good. There is no evidence for any of this.

Can the same argument not be made for forced labour?

Is the US not lowering it's capacity to innovate and grow it's economy by preventing the use of forced labour(even in other countries)? Why should these "guardrails" stay in place if the argument is "the reality is they are right that guardrails only serve to hurt us in the long run, at least at this pivotal point in time"?