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Ella Gould

Professor Slanker

English 1201

8 September 2019

Foreign Influence on American Regulations

The year before I began high school a major event was going on in this country, the 2016

presidential election. Whatever the political ideals one has there is no denying that there were

some crazy things going on during this election. The combination of taking U.S. History, having

a great teacher, and the election sparked a great interest in politics. Everyday before class would

start my teacher would relate the events of the election to class and we would follow what was

going on pretty closely. Along with sparking an interest in politics I also became more aware of

foreign influence as Russia was mentioned more and more. When the election was over and I no

longer had a teacher relating current political happenings to our history class, I still kept up with

what was happening in the world of politics. My curiosity had begun.

Nearly three years after the election and my interest in foreign interference was rekindled.

The Mueller report was out and it was the summer before taking a government class,

coincidentally taught by the same teacher I had for U.S. History in 2016. The Mueller report

release got me thinking about how foreign nations have more influence over the American

political system than we tend to realize. Then to top it off I read a book for my upcoming

government class called ​Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption

and Enriches Family and Friends.​ The book gave an in depth look into how foreign nations

influence the decisions of politicians through financial gains for family members or friends. I
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first became interested in politics a few years ago and my interest has only grown as I’m back in

the classroom with the teacher who inspired me to follow politics in the first place. Additionally

after reading that book for summer work my interest in how foreign nations exploit our political

system to achieve their desires has grown exponentially. Specifically, I plan to explore how

foreign entities interfere with American political decisions regarding business and economics.

Currently I feel very inquisitive about this topic. I believe I have a lot to learn beyond

reading one specific book and I’m excited to expand my knowledge on the topic. I think that as

of right now foreign countries our influencing our politics in regards to business much to heavily

and in all the wrong ways. I think that these foreign countries have convinced our leaders to do

things that benefit only themselves and the foreign countries, instead of serving America as they

should. What I believe about this topic is that this foreign influence goes much deeper than what

is seen on the surface and it probably goes much farther back than what anyone thinks it does. As

of right now, I know that countries have made deals with politicians on a more personal level in

order to prevent the American government from doing anything against the foreign nation’s best

interest business wise. Leaders of all parties and many different foreign countries have done

something like this.

What I still need to know about this topic is the history. I am aware of more current

occurrences of foreign influence, but I think to truly understand things I should look further back

in time. I also think I need to find more examples overall, I am aware of things on a basic level

due to reading ​Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and

Enriches Family and Friends,​ but I need to find more examples of who is influencing who and

for what reasons. I’m hoping to learn more on how foreign nations influence American politics
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so much as well as why. I’d also like to learn more about who is allowing this influence and

whether or not they wrongfully gain from this outside interference.

Possible questions:

How do foreign nations influence American regulation of business?

How do foreign nations influence American elections?

I know these are two pretty different questions, but I’d like to do a little bit of research

before settling on one. Even though the essence of these questions is different they do come from

the same topic, so that is why they share the same research proposal.