GOP presidential candidate criticizes Biden administration for encouraging ESG (2023)
| Environmental, social, and corporate governance |
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| • What is ESG? • Enacted ESG legislation • Arguments for and against ESG • Opposition to ESG • Federal ESG rules • ESG legislation tracker • Economy and Society: Ballotpedia's weekly ESG newsletter |
The day after President Biden’s environmental justice announcement, the New York Post published an op-ed by a challenger for the White House, Vivek Ramaswamy. The op-ed – which is an excerpt from Ramaswamy’s new book Capitalist Punishment: How Wall Street is Using Your Money to Create a Country You Didn’t Vote For – criticized the administration for, in Ramaswamy’s view, tilting the scales on ESG and steering public funds to pet projects using the investment strategy. Ramaswamy – an entrepreneur and the founder of the self-described post-ESG asset management firm Strive – announced his bid for the Republican presidential nomination earlier this year:
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It’s no surprise that liberal politicians have been some of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) policies’ strongest proponents. ESG-friendly politicians often co-opt pension fund money for political ends. However, that’s not the only power they have. Elected officials can also wield influence through executive orders, agency directives, and letter writing to pave the way for ESG asset managers to access the back door of corporate America and sometimes even shove those managers through. That’s exactly what President Biden has done. The first thing he did when he took office was pick up his executive order pen. He used it to direct his federal agencies to revisit their rules with an eye toward making them more ESG-friendly. There was no need for messy bipartisanship, congressional compromises, or involving the legislative branch at all. Why bother with the tedious, constitutionally approved method of making new laws when there is an army of federal bureaucrats at your disposal? On day one of his presidency, he lamented “the unbearable human costs of systemic racism” and mandated an “ambitious whole-of-government equity agenda.”… The same day, he rejoined the Paris Agreement, and simultaneously issued another order directing that all federal agencies “immediately commence work to confront the climate crisis.”… Within a week, he issued yet another order, promising “bold, progressive action that combines the full capacity of the Federal Government with efforts from every corner of our Nation, every level of government, and every sector of our economy.” He charged every federal agency with appointing an “Agency Chief Sustainability Officer” and announced that the United States would be “promoting the flow of capital toward climate-aligned investments and away from high-carbon investments.” By May, his executive orders became even more specific, focusing federal climate efforts on the financial sector in particular. Through strokes of the executive pen, a Green New Deal that would never be approved by Congress would be pushed on corporate America through Wall Street, guided by the heavy hand of federal agencies at every turn. Following the orders of the new climate commander-in-chief, the government joined the ESG battle. For the most part, federal agencies were pleased to be conscripted into service. The Department of Labor was one of the first agencies to respond…. There’s another little-known federal agency that is playing a big role in allowing ESG to go unchecked: the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). The agency is tucked inside the Department of the Treasury and is tasked with regulating US banks. As ESG proponents know, access to banking services from major financial institutions is a critical part of any business—if a business can’t open a bank account, process credit card payments, or get lines of credit, it can’t exist. Cutting off banking services is a death blow and one that can be delivered without political or market accountability…. So through the OCC’s somewhat obscure rule-making and guidance-issuing process, the Biden administration has handed ESG activists their sledgehammer back. Banks, like asset managers, are simply one more tool that politicians can manipulate to further political agendas that Congress would never enact.[1] |
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See also
- Environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG)
- Economy and Society: Ballotpedia's ESG newsletter
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
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