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Republicans respond to Europe’s ESG regulations (2025)
| 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 |
Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), a member of the Senate Banking Committee, introduced a bill—the PROTECT USA Act—that he says will protect American companies from the European Union’s (EU) ESG reporting requirements.
Republicans and American business organizations have argued the EU’s ESG regulations would hurt and force compliance on U.S. companies. Hagerty’s bill would prohibit foreign governments from enforcing the rules against some American businesses and nullify foreign court judgments against protected companies.
According to Bloomberg:
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'American companies should be governed by US laws, not unaccountable lawmakers in foreign capitals,' Hagerty said in the proposal. 'The European Union’s ideologically motivated regulatory overreach is an affront to US sovereignty.' Confrontations between the EU and US have become routine since the November reelection of Donald Trump, with ESG emerging as a particular flashpoint. Even before Trump’s return to the White House, the GOP has regularly attacked ESG (environmental, social and governance), characterizing it as 'anti-American' and 'woke.' The focus of Hagerty’s proposed bill is the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, which seeks to hold large companies accountable for ESG violations, and requires them to produce climate transition plans. Widespread opposition to CSDDD — both from within and outside the EU — led the European Commission to propose significant changes to the directive last month. Among provisions abandoned was a planned civil liability clause that would have applied to all large companies doing business in the EU.[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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