Applebaum: And what happens when you talk about these issues in the Senate? Can you get colleagues on board? Is there any bipartisan support?

Whitehouse: Yes. Chuck Grassley has been happy to be involved on these issues, Lindsey Graham has spoken positively about my bill and has helped us with hearings. So there is some bipartisan support.

The problem as I see itand I cannot prove this, but I deduce it from the rustling of the leaves and the shadows in the jungleis that the interests who make money off of these schemes fight back quite hard, often through traditional lobbying groups. Some of them got the Chamber of Commerce to oppose our bill. Later, after the chamber backed off, the American Bar Association took a position opposed to the bill. Now we are hearing from the National Federation of Independent Businesses. They talk about the catastrophic burden on small businesses of having to disclose the name, address, and Social Security number of the owner. It takes, like, 30 seconds to fill in that information on a form.

Applebaum: What about the public? Can you get your constituents interested?

Whitehouse: I think constituents have a general sense that there is bad behavior lurking behind creepy shell corporations. They get that criminal activity, terrorist activity, kleptocratic activity, all can be facilitated by having these shell corporations available and other vehicles designed to hide money. But its not top of anyones mind, particularly in the environment we are facing right now.

Also, most people, including both colleagues and constituents, are not aware of the scale of what we are facing. I think that a real clash of civilizations is going on, and I think the clash is essentially binarybetween rule-of-law land and anti-rule-of-law land, between states where the law is still enforced, on the one hand, and the kleptocrats, oligarchs, criminal regimes on the other.

But if you are one of the great thieves and barons of anti-rule-of-law land, you live in fear that a bigger thief and a bigger baron can come and steal everything that youve stolen. So you need to take your wealth and hide it somewhere safe, like Britain or the U.S. Rule-of-law land is indulging and facilitating its rival and its enemy. Thats obviously simplistic, but I think its very real.

Applebaum: Donald Trump and his company have been living for a long time in what you call anti-rule-of-law land. I have worried, ever since he first appeared as a political figure in 201415, that he was going to be a vehicle to bring even more people from this world into U.S. politics.

Whitehouse: I think hes very comfortable with the world of shell corporations and tax avoidance. So not just him, but the other American business interests that operate comfortably in or along the fringes of anti-rule-of-law land have been very unhelpful in our efforts to solve this problem.

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The U.S. Shouldnt Be a Sleazy Offshore Principality - The Atlantic