‘Absolutely Infuriating’: Manchin Blasts Biden For Vetoing Rebuke Of ESG

Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) has expressed his disappointment with President Joe Biden’s veto of a resolution that would have prevented retirement funds from investing in accordance with the ESG movement. The Labor Department had recently reversed a ban on retirement investments made with ESG criteria, and both the House and Senate had voted to nix the final rule. However, Biden issued the first veto of his presidency on Monday to block the resolution. Manchin issued a statement criticizing the “absolutely infuriating” veto and stating that the administration’s campaign to advance a radical social and environmental agenda is exacerbating challenges faced by West Virginians recovering from a pandemic, paying bills amid record inflation, and facing the largest land war in Europe since World War II. Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) also joined Republican colleagues in voting to reverse the final rule.
Skeptics of ESG argue that it intermixes political and social causes with profitability, leading to lackluster performance from ESG funds amid market turmoil over the past year. Republicans had celebrated the resolution as a rebuke of the White House’s nods toward the ESG movement, while American investors desire politically neutral allocation of their funds. An exclusive poll from The Daily Wire revealed that 64% of respondents believe that individual investors should decide whether funds are appropriated according to ESG standards, while only 20% believe that Wall Street asset managers should decide. Biden signed an executive order stating that the impacts of climate change present physical risk to assets, publicly traded securities, private investments, and companies, which led to the establishment of the Climate-Related Financial Risk Advisory Committee to understand and mitigate the risks that climate change poses to economic stability.