Many expect the Trump administration to enact lower taxes, lighter regulations, and reverse many signature programs of the Biden administration, including the government-mandated transition from fossil fuel energy to wind and solar, and from gasoline-powered cars and trucks to electric vehicles (EVs).

“I think a lot of CEOs in the country said enough is enough,” Andy Puzder, former chief executive of CKE Restaurants, told The Epoch Times.

“Just look at the stock market on the day after the election and you can see exactly how American CEOs and American businesses felt about Trump winning the presidency.”

Cutting Regulations

Regulatory policy is likely the area where the incoming administration could have the most immediate impact on businesses.

According to an analysis by the American Action Forum (AAF), as of August this year, the Biden administration has handed down 994 new regulatory rules, adding an estimated $1.69 trillion in costs to American businesses. By comparison, during Trump’s first four years in office, his administration wrote 1,084 new rules that mostly eased regulations and reduced costs by $99.9 billion.

“Agencies like the EPA and Department of Energy regularly acknowledge in their cost-benefit analyses how energy efficiency regulations will raise up-front product costs,” AAF director of regulatory policy Dan Goldbeck told The Epoch Times.

A July study by University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan calculated that the present value of the cost of regulations imposed by the Biden–Harris administration amounted to $47,000 for each American household, while deregulation during the Trump administration reduced costs by nearly $11,000 per household.

The new fuel economy standards set by the Biden administration, for example, are predicted to add $3,400 to the cost of new cars, trucks, and SUVs. The Biden administration similarly imposed tough new emissions restrictions on electric utilities, as well as new efficiency regulations on furnaces, water heaters, central air conditioners, dishwashers, and other household appliances.

Trump, by contrast, pledged during a campaign rally in October to “sign an executive order directing every federal agency to immediately remove every single burdensome regulation driving up the cost of goods.”

Trump has also toyed with appointing Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk to run a newly-proposed Department of Government Efficiency, with the goal of cutting $2 trillion or more from the federal budget.

“If what President Trump says about establishing a government efficiency agency with Elon Musk is in fact going to happen, and they have the fortitude to start taking a chainsaw to government bureaucracy, that would be positive for the economy long-term, but there will likely be some added pain over the short-term,” Tim Schwarzenberger, portfolio manager with Inspire Investments, told The Epoch Times.

While Schwarzenberger predicts a recession in early 2025, he says that Trump’s policies “could make that downturn less severe as he will be cutting taxes and regulations and opening up energy production, while at the same time reducing green energy programs and possibly reforming Medicaid.”

Boosting Oil and Gas Production

America’s energy industry will be the sector most heavily impacted by the change in administrations, analysts say.

“Trump is likely to remove regulations and other limits on fracking and other forms of energy production, which would be good for oil drillers, refiners, and sectors that use a lot of energy products: transportation, manufacturing, aviation and others,” Peter Earle, senior economist at the American Institute for Economic Research, told The Epoch Times.

Despite efforts by the Biden administration to restrict drilling on federal lands, U.S. oil and gas production continues to break records. The U.S. Energy Information Administration reported in March that “the United States produced more crude oil than any nation at any time, according to our International Energy Statistics, for the past six years in a row.”

However, given America’s abundance of energy resources, analysts say there is a lot of room to expand domestic production further.

“We’ve got record production of energy, but it’s all happened despite the administration, and on lands that the administration cannot control,” Dan Kish, senior vice president of policy at the Institute for Energy Research, told The Epoch Times. “We just don’t think there’s any reason to have a scarcity of affordable and reliable electricity or energy of any kind in the United States.”

Expanding energy production, particularly in oil and gas, has been a cornerstone of Trump’s economic platform.

“One of the major proposals in energy has been to ease the permitting process of drilling on federal land and encouraging new natural gas pipelines, which will ultimately create greater supply and should reduce consumer costs and have positive economic impacts,” Ryan Yonk, an economist at the American Institute for Economic Research, told The Epoch Times.

Coal plants, which are facing closures due to new emissions regulations, could also benefit under a Trump administration. According to the Department of Energy (DOE), nearly one-third of existing U.S. coal plants are scheduled to be shut down by 2035. But that may change.

Brian Savoy, CFO of Duke Energy, an electricity utility that serves the Carolinas, Florida, Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky, said his company might keep its coal plants running if the Trump administration cuts back EPA emissions regulations that were enacted under the Biden administration.

However, while it is one thing to get oil and gas companies to produce more from existing wells, it is quite another to get them to invest significant capital into exploration and building new wells and refineries. It is not only regulatory uncertainty that is holding them back, it is also the over-investment that led to a glut, which drove prices down a decade ago. By reducing the cost of regulation and providing some assurance that the industry will not be targeted by climate mandates, analysts say the incoming Trump administration might reduce the cost structure enough to entice the industry to begin investing again.

“What President Trump did in his first term, and what President Biden has been unable to do, is to get the price of oil down and have oil production continue at an increasing pace,” Puzder said. “That’s when you see an impact on inflation overall; it’s when oil companies can make a profit at a lower price per barrel.”

Many analysts predict that if a second Trump term can bring lower energy prices, this will have a ripple effect throughout the U.S. economy.

Retail gasoline prices, which were already coming down during the final years of the Obama administration, hit a low of less than $2 per gallon during the first Trump administration and remained under $3 per gallon throughout his term. Gas prices shot up to more than $5 per gallon during the Biden administration before falling back to the current range of between $3 and $4 per gallon.

“All of these things that have gone up in price significantly are affected by the input costs of energy,” Kish said. “Everything that goes into the price of eggs is affected by the price of energy—it’s heating the hen house, it’s the energy consumed in making food to feed the chickens, it’s the transportation of the eggs, it’s the refrigeration.”

Renewable Energy May Retreat

One segment of the stock market that has not responded well to Trump’s victory, however, is renewable energy.

The stock price of Sunnova Energy, a solar energy developer, tumbled from $6.90 per share on election day to $3.96 per share the following day, and continued to fall to just over $3 per share at the end of the week. More broadly, the Solar Energy Index CFD, which tracks the performance of publicly traded companies in the solar energy sector, fell from $42 before the election to $36 by week’s end.

Anticipated headwinds regarding federal regulations and subsidies that support this industry are the likely cause.

“Trump has pledged to kill the offshore wind industry on his first day in office,” Robert Bryce, energy analyst and author, told The Epoch Times. “There’s no reason to doubt that he will do just that, which will be good news for whales and ratepayers.”

In addition, “the Biden administration has opened huge tracts of land in the Western U.S. to development [for wind and solar plants],” Bryce said. “I expect Trump and his appointees will backtrack on that and may even withdraw some of the permits that have already been granted.”

Reaching net zero has been a central goal of the Biden–Harris administration, which committed in April 2023 to “achieving a carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035 and net zero emissions economy by no later than 2050.”

The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 allocated approximately $400 billion in tax credits, federal loans and subsidies toward the production of “green” energy in the United States, primarily for wind and solar power, but also for nuclear energy.

However, a 2021 University of Chicago report, authored by economists Michael Greenstone and Ishan Nath, analyzed regulations, called renewable portfolio standards (RPS), which forced utilities to have at least 2 to 5 percent of their power come from wind and solar, and concluded that “electricity prices are 11 percent higher seven years after RPS passage.”

In addition, a 2021 report by Columbia University’s Climate School, found that as the share of renewables exceeds a minimal share of the energy mix, electricity bills go up.

“Continuing to push the false narrative of abundant and affordable clean energy is a huge political risk that will backfire when the public has to pony up for a bill they weren’t expecting,” the report’s author Lucas Toh writes.

Cutting Personal Taxes, Hiking Tariffs

Tax policy is another area where many expect to see significant changes under a Trump administration.

Much of the tax cutting that Trump pledged during his reelection campaign will require cooperation from Congress, and while Republicans were able to gain a majority in the Senate, they are still waiting on vote counts to see whether they will also control the House.

Particularly significant is whether Republicans will succeed in extending the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) of 2017, which is due to expire in 2025.

The TCJA cut the corporate tax rate to 21 percent from 35 percent, and while this rate cut has no expiry date, both President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris had proposed increasing the corporate tax rate to 28 percent.

If the TCJA is not renewed, however, personal income tax rates will rise, standard deductions will be reduced, and the child tax credit will be reduced as well. The maximum tax bracket will go up from 37 percent to 39.6 percent; however, the $10,000 cap on deductions for state and local taxes, which largely benefitted wealthy people in high-tax states such as California and New York, will no longer apply.

To the extent keeping these tax cuts in place spurs consumption and investment, many economists favor it. Critics, however, fear it will reduce government revenue and increase the federal deficit, which is projected by the Congressional Budget Office to hit $1.9 trillion at the end of this year.

Government revenues do not always correlate to tax rates, however, and if the tax cuts lead to significant economic growth, they could end up bringing in more tax revenues. Government tax receipts have increased consistently since the passage of the TCJA, from $3.3 trillion in 2017 to $4.4 trillion in 2023, according to Statista.

Other elements of Trump’s tax plan have received less positive reviews.

This includes his pledge to impose 20 percent tariffs on most imports, and tariffs as high as 60 percent on Chinese imports, which could include EVs, wind and solar components, furniture, toys, clothes, and sporting equipment.

Import taxes at this level “would spike the average tariff rate on all imports to highs not seen since the Great Depression,” Tax Foundation economist Erica York wrote. It could hurt the retail industry and fuel inflation.

However, it is unclear how much a Trump administration will ultimately differ from his predecessor in regard to trade with China.

During his term in office, Trump imposed about $80 billion in new import taxes on thousands of products such as steel, aluminum, appliances, semiconductors, and solar panels, many of which were coming from China, according to the Tax Foundation.

The Biden administration kept most of those tariffs in place, and in May added an additional $3.6 billion in tariffs on Chinese imports, including semiconductors and electric vehicles. And while the Trump administration collected $89 billion from so-called “trade war” tariffs, the Biden administration collected more than $144 billion.

In addition, Trump’s pledge to cut taxes on tips, which Vice President Kamala Harris also promised to implement, has been met with some skepticism.

“Among the most popular proposals are those to lower or stop taxation on tips and overtime wages for service workers, or eliminate taxes on social security benefits,” Yonk said.

But these piecemeal efforts would have little overall economic benefit, while further complicating the tax code and raising questions about fairness for workers outside the service industry, York said.

“Instead, extending the tax cuts from the first term and expanding them, without narrowly targeting specific groups, would yield better economic effects and create broad-based tax relief rather than special programs for narrower groups,” he said.

According to the Census Bureau, 43 percent of American voters cast ballots by mail in 2020, double the 21 percent who did so in 2016.

While 2020 was an exceptional year because of the government’s response to the COVID-19 virus, the United States is nonetheless experiencing a longer-term transition to an absentee ballot system from an in-person system. Currently, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, Washington, and the District of Columbia have “mostly mail voting” systems, according to an analysis by the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL).

And while the 2020 election saw record levels of voter turnout, the shift away from traditional voting methods also coincides with a decline in trust in America’s electoral system. An October 2023 poll by the Public Affairs Council, found that only 37 percent of Americans believe the 2024 elections will be both “honest and open,” while 43 percent expressed “serious doubts” about election integrity.

This loss of trust raises the question of whether the problem stems from losing candidates charging that the elections were stolen from them, or from America transitioning to a system that prioritizes convenience from one that prioritized integrity.

Many pundits claim there is no tradeoff between the two and government officials, notably the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, called the 2020 election “the most secure in American history.”

However,, a large number of Americans, particularly Republican and Independent voters, remain unconvinced.

The NCSL cautions that “if a voter is marking a ballot at home, and not in the presence of election officials, there may be more opportunity for coercion by family members or others.”

According to a recent NCSL study, 28 states, including the key swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, currently offer “no-excuse” absentee voting, which means that any voter can request and cast an absentee ballot without offering a reason.

In addition, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, and Washington, D.C., automatically mail absentee ballots to all voters.

In the remaining 15 states, voters must provide an acceptable excuse (such as illness or disability, or being overseas on Election Day) to qualify for an absentee ballot.

The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that keeps a running tally of proven cases of voter fraud, has documented more than 1,500 cases to date and 1,276 criminal convictions.

“Each and every one of the cases in this database represents an instance in which a public official, usually a prosecutor, thought it serious enough to act upon it,” the report states. “And each and every one ended in a finding that the individual had engaged in wrongdoing in connection with an election hoping to affect its outcome—or that the results of an election were sufficiently in question and had to be overturned.”

According to Hans von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, the numbers cited in the report are probably an understatement.

“The thing about these 1,500 cases is that they’re clearly just the tip of the iceberg because fraud is very hard to detect,” he told The Epoch Times. “A lot of times it’s just found by accident, particularly in a state like New York or California where there’s no voter ID requirement at all.”

Many of these cases cited in the report involved the fraudulent use of absentee ballots. In the case of one Michigan resident who was convicted of voter fraud, “an employee at an assisted living facility, completed roughly two dozen absentee voter applications, forging individual signatures of residents.”

However, the left-leaning Brennan Center for Justice, an affiliate of New York University, criticized what it said was the “myth of voter fraud.”

“Politicians at all levels of government have repeatedly, and falsely, claimed the 2016, 2018, and 2020 elections were marred by large numbers of people voting illegally,” the institute said in a report. “However, extensive research reveals that fraud is very rare, voter impersonation is virtually nonexistent, and many instances of alleged fraud are, in fact, mistakes by voters or administrators.

“The same is true for mail ballots, which are secure and essential to holding a safe election amid the coronavirus pandemic,” its report states.

In the manic weeks following the 2020 election, data analytics expert Ken Block, president of Simpatico Software Systems, was hired by the Trump campaign to data-mine for voter fraud in the key states of Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, and Wisconsin, and find “factual, hard evidence that can underpin successful legal challenges.”

“It started with assessing the deceased voters and duplicate voters,” Mr. Block told The Epoch Times. “We looked at every single mail-in ballot cast in the swing states, looking for deceased voters.

”We found, in terms of actual deceased voters that we could confirm through data, a couple of dozen.”

Mr. Block said he found a small number of people who voted twice, typically wealthy individuals who had two residences, but the cases of detected fraud were not nearly enough to sway the election. He was also asked by the Trump campaign to investigate various “hearsay claims” of voter fraud.

“We looked at every single voter fraud claim, and I was able to show with evidence and proof why it was flawed, or just completely wrong in the first place, and those findings were accepted by [President Trump’s] lawyers,” he said. “I think it’s crucially important that everybody understands how hard we looked and how important it was, from a legal standpoint, that the claims of fraud that I evaluated were looked at as hard, if not harder than the defense attorneys who would be fending off these lawsuits.”

And yet, despite all efforts to assure the public that elections are sound, many Americans continue to suspect that something is amiss.

While some instances of voter fraud may be detectable in data and audits, others, such as whether voters are noncitizens, or engaging in ballot harvesting, or illicitly filling out ballots on behalf of others, are more difficult to detect unless witnessed in person or caught on camera.

A particular issue with mail-in ballots is the proliferation of ballot drop-off boxes since 2020, few of which are monitored.

According to Mollie Hemingway, editor-in-chief of The Federalist, and others who analyzed the 2020 election, the funding and locations of many ballot drop boxes in 2020 was directed by an organization called the Center for Tech and Civic Life, backed by hundreds of millions of dollars from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Ms. Hemingway argued in her book, “Rigged,” that the donations from Mr. Zuckerberg, called “Zuck Bucks,” were partisan and focused on swing states.

The influence of private money in state electoral systems has only heightened the suspicions of many Americans.

A 2021 report from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Election Lab states that “even many scholars who argue that fraud is generally rare agree that fraud with VBM [vote-by-mail] voting seems to be more frequent than with in-person voting.

“There are two major features of VBM that raise these concerns,” the report states. “First, the ballot is cast outside the public eye, and thus the opportunities for coercion and voter impersonation are greater.

“Second, the transmission path for VBM ballots is not as secure as traditional in-person ballots. These concerns relate both to ballots being intercepted and ballots being requested without the voter’s permission.”

The report cites, among others, the case of a campaign manager in a North Carolina congressional race who collected empty mail-in ballots and then filled them in for his own candidate. Ultimately, that led to the election being overturned.

A recent study by the Heartland Institute infers from a voter survey that mail-in ballot fraud likely occurred in large enough numbers to have swayed the 2020 presidential election.

The study found that, in swing states, mail-in votes in 2020 heavily favored candidate Joe Biden, typically outnumbering mail-in votes for President Donald Trump by 2 to 1. Based on a 2023 survey of 1,000 voters conducted jointly with Rasmussen Reports, Heartland found that 28 percent of respondents said that they had voted in a way that could be illegal, including filling out ballots for others, forging signatures, or voting in states where they weren’t permanent residents.

By removing 28 percent of mail-in ballots from both candidates in the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, Heartland calculated that Trump would have won the Electoral College, 311–227.

Critics of this study have countered that the framing of the questions may have confused those being surveyed. Filling out ballots for others, for example in the case of a blind or disabled family member, isn’t always illegal.

Critics also questioned whether respondents to the survey may have confused request forms to receive mail-in ballots—to which the voter fraud issues don’t apply—with the actual ballots themselves.

To allow for error, however, Heartland reduced the number of disqualified votes to 3 percent from 28 percent and calculated that President Trump would still have won the Electoral College, 279–259.

“It’s not worth re-litigating the 2020 election,” Jack McPherrin, a research editor at the Heartland Institute and one of the study’s authors, told The Epoch Times. But he says that claiming the 2020 election was the most secure in U.S. history is “a pretty ridiculous assertion.”

“This analysis was not done to say Trump is our rightful president,” Mr. McPherrin said. “This analysis was done to show that the 2020 election was tainted by mail-in ballot fraud so that we can fix it moving forward.

“It just provides a great avenue for fraud because there are so few restrictions and policies in place to prevent it,” he said. “Those policies were intentionally relaxed in 2020 in many states, and that opened the floodgates for fraud to occur.”

Asked how he could reconcile his findings with investigations that indicated voter fraud was exceedingly rare, he said that “mail-in ballot fraud is extremely difficult to prove.”

One aspect of mass mail-in voting that causes particular concern is ballot harvesting, or the process of private citizens or organizations collecting and submitting ballots on behalf of others, outside of the supervision of election officials.

According to a 2022 report authored by Mr. von Spakovsky, the potential for voter fraud “is made worse in the many states like California that allow vote trafficking, which proponents of mail-in voting call ‘vote harvesting’ because that sounds better.”

Every state allows absentee ballots to be mailed back or delivered personally to election officials by voters, their immediate family members, or a designated caregiver, he notes.

“But vote-trafficking states allow any third-party stranger to go to voters’ homes to pick up and deliver their ballot,” the report states.

“In other words, these states give political actors with a stake in the outcome of the election the ability to handle a very valuable commodity—the ballots that can ensure the victory (or defeat) … of the candidates who they work for and support, giving them the opportunity to complete, alter, or simply fail to deliver those ballots.”

Advocates of mail-in voting counter that states that have all-mail elections typically require voters to sign the envelope in which the ballot is mailed and then match it with the signature in the state’s voter rolls. In addition, they say, many counties place bar codes on ballot envelopes that can be tracked by the U.S. Postal Service.

How bar codes would track votes in the case of ballot drop boxes is unclear, however. And according to the NCSL, only 31 states verify signatures on mail-in ballots, and 10 states and Washington, D.C., verify that a mail-in ballot envelope has been signed but don’t conduct signature verification.

With the November election fast approaching, what can be done to restore trust among American voters so that, whoever wins, the result is accepted by both parties as legitimate and fair?

Mr. von Spakovsky has proposed systematic election audits as one solution. Typically, he said, post-election analyses amount to hand recounts of ballots, but don’t verify if all ballots cast were legitimate.

He proposes pre-election audits of voter rolls to ensure that all registered voters are eligible to vote. He also proposes, among other things, equipment audits to ensure voting machines are accurate, procedure audits to ensure that election laws were followed, and chain-of-custody audits for ballots.

While it may be impractical to conduct full audits of every voting district, Mr. von Spakovsky proposed a model adopted in Texas where a minimum number of randomly selected districts are audited each election cycle, and additional audits conducted where credible cases of malfeasance have been charged.

Election audits have received some pushback from Democrats, Mr. von Spakovsky said. The Biden administration initially sued to block the process of post-election audits, claiming that it was voter intimidation and a violation of the Voting Rights Act.

“I think that was a purely partisan decision,” he said. To date, the Justice Department hasn’t pursued this claim further.

Many also propose tightening up ID requirements, despite the objections of organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the Brennan Center, which consider it voter suppression.

“We strongly recommend that a state not only have ID requirements for in-person voting, but that they also have it for absentee balloting,” Mr. von Spakovsky said. “While a family member might have the ID of someone that they’re voting for in their family, it might make it more difficult for strangers to be able to do that.”

Currently, seven states require the signature of a witness on absentee ballots, in addition to the voter’s signature, and three states—Mississippi, Missouri, and Oklahoma—require the absentee ballot envelope to be notarized. In Arkansas, a copy of the voter’s ID must be returned with the absentee/mail ballot.

Proof of U.S. citizenship is another area where illegal voting is hard to detect, as there are no nationwide databases of citizenship. Audits to confirm citizenship sometimes rely on purchases of data banks from credit agencies, but that would not include those who do not have loans or credit cards, including many students.

This is complicated by the fact that many states provide driver licenses to noncitizens, and some states allow noncitizens to vote in local elections.

In addition, a 2013 Supreme Court ruling in the case of Arizona v. Intertribal Council of Arizona barred states from requiring proof of U.S. citizenship in federal elections. According to the decision, states can “require only that an applicant aver, under penalty of perjury, that he is a citizen.”

According to Mr. Block, another challenge that the electoral system faces is the sheer variety of voting regulations, not only among states, but among counties as well. There are more than 5,000 different voting jurisdictions across the United States, he said.

“We have a basic framework problem in the way that we’re organized and the infrastructure that we have,” he said. “It lacks the basic things we need for integrity in terms of ensuring people can’t vote twice, ensuring that deceased voters are efficiently removed from voter rolls, etc.”

Given that there is now less than a year before the election begins, analysts say that the 2024 election will likely proceed under election rules and systems that are similar to those in 2020, despite the absence of a pandemic. And if the election is close, as many expect it will be, many will continue to mistrust the outcome.

Mr. McPherrin argues the United States is capable of going back to a system where the majority of people, on election day present ID, vote in person, and the country knows the results by the next day.

“It’s absurd to think we can’t do that,” he said. “We’ve done that many times in the past and we can continue to do that moving forward; we just need to revert back to the systems that we had in place in 2016, 2012, and 2008.

“What can be more important than ensuring election security in a democratic republic?” Mr. McPherrin said. “I can’t think of a single other thing that’s more important because it’s the foundation of our entire constitutional republic, and without secure elections, we will not have a functioning democratic republic for much longer.”

“What’s happening in the beef industry is the same thing that’s happened in the sheep industry,” Mr. Hemmert told The Epoch Times. “America peaked at 51 million sheep; today, we have less than 5 million.

“I’m seeing empty pastures in my area,” he said. “People said ‘to hell with it.’”

Bill Bullard, CEO of R-CALF USA, spoke to The Epoch Times about the issue.

“The cattle industry is the last frontier; it’s the last segment of the livestock industry that still has a sufficient level of competition to sustain independent producers,” Mr. Bullard said.

With about 5,000 members, R-CALF represents independent cattle ranchers and is fighting to preserve their independence. But they are facing off against a group of only four major buyers for their cows, new federal initiatives that favor the large packing companies, and climate activism that claims cows emit too many greenhouse gasses and must have their numbers reduced.

“The model that they have applied, first to the poultry industry and now to the hog industry, has been extremely successful for the multinational meat packers that want to vertically integrate the entire industry,” Mr. Bullard said, “and that vertical integration kills competition.”

The cash markets that once existed between buyers and sellers in these industries are largely gone, with farmers becoming either employees or working under contract to packing companies.

“Now, if you want to produce hogs, you do so by invitation from an integrator because you have a contract to produce hogs,” Mr. Bullard said. “They’re applying that, unfortunately, very successful model to the cattle industry right now.”

Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.) has also commented on the issue.

“That’s the example of vertical integration that’s already happened in large part with our pork producers and our poultry producers,” Ms. Hageman told The Epoch Times. “And they want to do exactly the same thing with our ranches. They want to basically make our ranchers nothing but paid employees, and the ranches and the real property would be owned by the big packers.”

South Dakota rancher Brett Kenzy told The Epoch Times that the American rancher is a remnant of a “self-reliant, independent, entrepreneurial, hardworking, religious, multigenerational person that used to be very commonplace.”

Ranchers now worry that having so much of the country’s meat production under the control of a handful of corporations will drive many farmers out of business and leave Americans at the mercy of a few global players.

The Miracle of Cows

“The miracle of the cow is the fact that she has four chambers in her stomach, and she can eat grass, which is carbohydrate, and create protein,” Mr. Kenzy said. “They’re the only animal on earth that can do it that efficiently.

“Beef is the most well-balanced source for human beings in terms of vitamins, minerals and protein,” he said, “but that four-chambered stomach, as they’re running it through, they belch methane.”

These methane emissions have put cows directly in the crosshairs of climate activists. Many of the corporations that control food markets have joined net-zero clubs like Climate Action 100+, which pledge to slash greenhouse gas emissions for themselves and their suppliers.

“Rather than just killing off the cattle all at once, this is going to be a controlled implosion of the beef industry,” Mr. Kenzy said. “I think the end goal is ultimately controlling the food supply.”

Cattle ranchers “went through a period from 2015 to 2021 where they could not recover their cost of production,” Mr. Bullard said. “We’ve seen segments of our industry literally drop like flies.”

“Just four decades ago, we had about 1.3 million independent cattle farmers and ranchers that were maintaining mother cow herds and raising calves each year,” Mr. Bullard said. “Due to economic costs, price squeezes, a lack of profitability, and a lack of competition [among buyers], we wiped out 43 percent of them.”

American households have experienced this phenomenon in the form of escalating prices for beef. The average price that American consumers paid for beef increased from $3.89 per pound in January 2020 to $5.10 per pound as of July 2023, according to the Federal Reserve.

“The fact that cattle producers were receiving seriously depressed prices for the cattle, at the same time that consumers were paying super inflated prices for beef in the grocery store, that prompted us to file a national class action suit against the largest four packers that control 85 percent of the fed cattle market,” Mr. Bullard said.

It is only recently that these price increases made their way through to the ranchers that remained in business.

“This year is going to be profitable for the cow-calf man, but for the last six, seven years there has not been profit,” Mr. Hemmert said. “When there’s not profit, it signals to the industry to cut back, quit producing, and there’s been a lot of cow herds that have been sold.”

“It took decimation of the cow-calf industry to make us profitable again,” he said. “That’s kind of sad, right?”

The Problem With Cows

The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization asserts that emissions from livestock farms are about seven gigatons of carbon dioxide per year, or about 15 percent of all human-induced greenhouse gas emissions (pdf).

“Beef and cattle milk production account for the majority of emissions, respectively contributing 41 and 20 percent of the sector’s emissions,” the U.N. states.

The solution proposed by climate activists is to reduce the production of beef, with a target of 30 percent reduction in cattle herds. Countries like Ireland and the Netherlands have already attempted to introduce laws and regulations to cut herds.

The Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency released a 13-year, 25-billion-euro plan in December 2021 to reduce emissions by 50 percent by 2030. The plan would cut the country’s cattle, pig, and chicken population by 30 percent through voluntary buy-outs or, if necessary, expropriations by the state of about 3,000 farms.

In May, the European Union green-lit a Dutch plan to spend $1.6 billion to purchase or seize Dutch farmers’ land. This policy led to mass farmer protests under slogans like “No Farmers, No Food.”

In the United States, however, targets to reduce livestock emissions are being set not by government fiat but by a handful of corporate food producers.

In June 2021, Tyson Foods announced that it was “the first U.S.-based protein company to have an emissions reduction target approved by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi).”

Tyson is one of the four dominant packing companies in the beef industry; the other three are Minnesota-based Cargill, and Brazilian-based JBS Foods and Marfrig. Together these four companies process about 85 percent of all beef in the United States.

And it is not just the packing oligopoly that is expanding its control into the ranching industry. A similar consolidation and vertical integration is happening within global grocery chains as well.

“Walmart has gone out and bought enormous ranches,” Ms. Hageman said. “They’re raising their own cattle, they’re processing it, and they’re selling it in their stores.”

‘Rich Countries Must Cut Meat Consumption’

The North American Meat Institute, whose members include meat packing companies that account for more than 95 percent of America’s meat and poultry products, launched its Protein PACT Academic Advisory Council in June, which works with its members “in setting greenhouse gas reduction targets to be approved by the Science Based Targets initiative.”

The SBTi, in partnership with organizations like the United Nations Global Compact and the World Wildlife Fund, pledges to “lead the way to a zero-carbon economy, boost innovation and drive sustainable growth by setting ambitious, science-based emissions reduction targets.” Calling itself the “global body enabling businesses to set emissions reduction targets in line with science,” the SBTi states that “companies in the forest, land and agriculture sectors will reduce at least 72% of emissions by no later than 2050.”

Tyson foods stated in its 2021 Sustainability Report that it had a “Science Based Target” of achieving a 30 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, and that addressing beef production would be key.

Despite the fact that greenhouse has emissions are a global phenomenon, emissions reduction plans typically focus on western countries. A 2022 report by Earth.org stated that in order to meet climate-change targets, “rich countries must cut meat consumption by at least 75%.”

A 2018 study published in Nature (pdf) claimed that beef consumption in western countries would need to decrease by 90 percent.

As cows become a prime target for climate activists, it is perhaps not coincidental that cattle ranchers are also the last livestock farmers who have not already been absorbed by global food conglomerates.

“Cattle is the single largest segment of American agriculture; it sets itself apart from the hog and poultry industries,” Mr. Bullard said. “The hog and poultry industry are primarily controlled by multinational meatpacking conglomerates, and they have the ability to defend their interests, unlike the disaggregated independent family farmers and ranchers scattered across the country.

“They simply don’t have the resources to fight back,” he said. “What the climate change folks have done is pick the low-hanging fruit, and that’s the U.S. cattle industry.”

Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef

Like with other segments of the world’s economy, the environmental social and governance (ESG) movement has made its way into food production as well. One of the key organizations in this effort is the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef (GRSB).

The GRSB is an international organization with representatives from 24 countries, whose mission is “the advancement of sustainability in the global beef value chain.” Its members include three of the four dominant meat packers: Tyson Foods, JBS, and Cargill.

In 2021, the GRSB announced its commitment to “reduce the net global warming impact of beef 30% by 2030 through global sustainability goals.”

“The Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef is perpetuating this globalism, where the standards are being set, not in the United States, but globally,” Mr. Bullard said. “They are dictating standards to producers, and they are able to enforce those standards by limiting access to the marketplace because GRSB consists of the world’s largest meat packers.

“But the standards are arbitrary in terms of how it affects the quality and safety of the meat that’s produced,” he said.

A Highly Segmented Industry

There are three stages to cattle production, which are often conducted by separate farms, and which have made the industry more difficult to vertically integrate. The first, called the cow-calf producer, maintains a mother cow herd and typically produces one calf each year per mother cow.

The second stage is the background stage, where calves from about six months old are fed a growing ration until they are about 1 year old and weigh about 900 pounds. The third stage are feedlots, where cows are fattened for slaughter, generally by grazing.

“We’re a highly segmented industry,” Mr. Kenzy said. “That’s why we’ve been so hard to capture.”

In the past, the stages of raising cattle featured arms-length transactions in which prices were set by supply and demand, as well as the quality of the ranchers’ cattle.

“The feedlot industry has become really concentrated in itself,” Mr. Hemmert said. “These huge feed yards have made these captive supply agreements with one of the four major packers to get all their cattle.”

USDA Interfering

The Biden administration’s actions regarding consolidation of the beef industry have been mixed.

On the one hand, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced a $1 billion program to fund new processing facilities, including a $962,954 grant to Benson & Turner Foods Inc. to build a cattle and hog processing plant on the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota.

On the other hand, the USDA is currently attempting to mandate that cattle ranchers attach radio-frequency identification tags (RFIDs) to their cattle in order to “track animals from birth to slaughter,” the American Veterinary Medical Association said.

The USDA claims this is for the purpose of tracking diseases, but many ranchers say it will be a prohibitive expense, particularly for smaller farmers.

“The driving force behind it is they want it for exports and they want it to benefit the multinational meat packers,” Mr. Bullard said. “If there’s a disease outbreak in a particular region but they can identify cattle not from that region, they’re able to continue trade uninterrupted, so there’s significant value.

“However, the meat packers don’t want to pay [ranchers] for the added cost of this kind of a program, so they convinced the government to require this to be a mandatory program” that ranchers must pay for, he said.

Others expressed concern that the RFID system will allow the packing conglomerates to impose whatever criteria they come up with on ranchers.

“It’s a way to regulate the production of beef in the name of sustainability,” Mr. Kenzy said, “basically registering all your cattle with the government.

He added that the Global Roundtable will ultimately tell ranchers how to graze, breed, and feed their cattle, rather than the market.

“This really isn’t about traceability or identification,” Ms. Hageman said. “We have a very robust identification and traceability system already in effect and working in the United States, and it’s worked for a long, long time.

“This is another form of surveillance,” she said, “and as we’ve seen by the federal government over the last couple of years, our government really likes to surveil the citizens of this country.

“What ultimately this will lead to is the USDA attempting to dictate operations and management decisions for our individual ranchers,” Ms. Hageman said. “It will also result in the vertical integration of the industry in the same way that they vertically integrated the pork and poultry industries, and it is going to be absolutely cost prohibitive for a lot of our smaller and our independent livestock producers.”

Antitrust Laws Unenforced

Meanwhile, there appears to be little interest within the Biden administration in enforcing antitrust laws in the animal agriculture industry. A relevant law is the 1921 Packers and Stockyards Act, which was written “to assure fair competition and fair trade practices, to safeguard farmers and ranchers, … to protect consumers, … and to protect members of the livestock, meat, and poultry industries from unfair, deceptive, unjustly discriminatory and monopolistic practices,” the USDA states.

“Many people in the USDA abandoned their core mission, which is really protecting our independent producers and our livestock producers, and they have aligned themselves with big business,” Ms. Hageman said.

“We don’t want a monopoly when it comes to food supply, and the fact is that the United States produces the healthiest, highest quality beef of any country in the world,” she said. “You don’t hear about very many instances where there is a problem, and in fact the instances that you do hear about are typically in the processing end of it, not the cattle production end of it.

“Our cattle producers run their operations very well; they take excellent care of their land because they’re dependent on it to make a living,” she said. “They are some of the very best conservationists that there are, in terms of protecting these resources and open spaces.”

Mr. Hemmert, the Kansas cattle rancher, said ranchers can produce more if given the opportunity to be profitable.

“But if you’re not profitable, you’re not going to produce, and your banker is not going to let you,” he said.

Mr. Kenzy spoke of past efforts by the government to decimate a food supply.

“In the 1800s, they killed all the buffalo off in the northern plains, and they did that to eradicate the ability of the Indians to sustain themselves,” Mr. Kenzy said. “And this war on beef, it looks to me like it’s much the same thing.”

The Epoch Times contacted Walmart and Tyson Foods for comment. Walmart did not respond; Tyson food directed us to the reports referenced in this article.

Reuters contributed to this report. Article cross-posted from our premium news partners at The Epoch Times.

Fink told attendees at a 2017 New York Times conference that as an index fund manager, “we are the ultimate long-term holder; we have to own all the companies that are in an index.

“If you’re an active manager and you don’t like a company, you can sell it,” Fink said. “I can’t sell. I have only one power, and I’m going to use that power heavily. And that’s the power of the vote.”

Proxy voting refers to the practice of fund managers voting the corporate shares they own on behalf of the individuals and institutions that invested in their funds. With the rise of mutual funds, pension funds and index funds, more than three-quarters of all stocks in the United States today are held, not by individual investors but by a short list of very large asset management firms.

BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, has more than $8 trillion in assets under management. Vanguard, the second largest, has more than $7 trillion under management. State Street has about $3.5 trillion under management.

At the same time, two proxy agent companies, International Shareholder Services (ISS) and Glass Lewis, have arisen to advise fund managers on how to vote on numerous shareholder proposals. Critics argue that fund managers and proxy agents now have undue influence over shareholder votes and that they have used that power to successfully push a left-wing agenda known as the environmental, social and governance (ESG) movement on companies.

Congressional Hearings on ESG

In a series of Congressional Financial Services Committee hearings this week, Republican representatives hammered the ESG industry, which the Biden administration has supported, for manipulating free markets for political goals, while Democrat representatives accused the GOP of racism, climate denial and Trotskyism.

“I support shareholder democracy, but it should be their say and not external third parties who exploit the existing process to impose their own social and political beliefs onto American public companies,” Committee Chairman Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) stated at the July 12 hearing.

In addition, “We must address the burdensome climate reporting and other requirements imposed by the Biden administration Securities and Exchange Commission,” he said. “The SEC has proposed a 500-page climate disclosure rule that would replace voluntary sustainability reports with mandatory disclosures, and the question of materiality is really thrown out the window.”

“The SEC is not a climate regulator, nor has Congress authorized it to mandate environmental policy via the disclosure regime,” McHenry said.

Democrat lawmakers, however, were united in their view that the ESG hearings should not take place and presented themselves as defenders of free market capitalism.

“Today is the first of six areas this month where Republicans will partner with a network of dark money, climate deniers and conspiracy theorists to wage their latest culture war against responsible investing,” Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) stated.

“For over 100 years, the followers of Leon Trotsky and the Socialist Workers Party have waged war against this capitalist model,” Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) stated. “Today, elements of the Republican Party join them in that effort. Ronald Reagan would be ashamed.”

How Proxy Voting Works

The hearings focused on how to address the role of proxy agents and how to deal with efforts by financial regulators under the Biden administration to impose extensive climate reporting rules on all listed companies. New regulations by the SEC would require companies to produce audited reports on their CO2 emissions, as well as those of their suppliers and customers.

“Coupled with the recent politicization of the SEC, proxy advisory firms have seized immense power to shift policy … to promote a liberal social and political agenda,” Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-Mich.) stated. “The proxy process is broken; it no longer promotes long-term shareholder value and operates without transparency or accountability.”

The proxy process begins with shareholder proposals, for which the SEC acts as a gatekeeper, determining which can proceed to a shareholder vote and which cannot. Under President Biden in 2021, the SEC shifted its policy to make it easier for ESG proposals to be put to a vote.

“The SEC’s new position is that corporate annual meetings must permit the smallest of shareholders to force shareholder votes on any social or policy concerns whether or not it is material to the company’s business,” James Copland, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, told Committee members. “This change in policy has predictably led to a significant increase in socially oriented shareholder activism.

“In 2022, the first year after the SEC’s new guidance, the number of shareholder proposals faced by the large companies tracked in our proxy monitor database jumped 33 percent over the prior three-year average,” Copland said. “To date in 2023, with approximately 10 percent of companies yet to file a proxy statement, companies have already seen a record number of shareholder proposals.”

“Environmental and social proposals now represent a majority of all proposals in Russell 3000 companies, 58 percent of proposals in 2022,” Jonathan Berry, a partner at law firm Boyden Gray, testified at the July 13 hearing. In addition, Berry said, the SEC has shown a bias toward green-lighting pro-ESG proposals while rejecting anti-ESG proposals.

“This last proxy season, my client, the National Center [for Public Policy Research], took a shareholder proposal that the SEC had blessed on a discrimination issue and substituted the terms ‘viewpoint’ and ‘ideology’ for the prior proposal’s terms ‘sexual orientation’ and ‘gender identity,’” Berry stated. “But the SEC said that my client’s proposal could be struck off the ballot, that viewpoint discrimination in the workplace was not a significant social policy question.”

“In recent years, third parties have hijacked the proxy process,” said National Association of Manufacturers Vice President Christopher Netram. “Activists use the proxy ballot to advance political and social agendas.”

“Proxy firms dictate corporate governance decisions, and the SEC is empowering these groups while also proposing ESG disclosure mandates of its own,” Netram said. “Turning the proxy ballot into a debate club diverts time and resources away from shareholder value creation and forces companies to wade into controversial topics over which they have no control.”

Examples of companies wading into controversial topics include Disney’s fight in 2022 against parental rights laws in Florida, Coca-Cola’s fight in 2021 against voter I.D. laws in Georgia, and Anheuser Busch and Target’s recent attachment of their brands to the transgender movement. In many cases, venturing into politics proved harmful to brand perception, has reduced sales, or caused a substantial decline in the company’s stock price, all to the detriment of end investors.

Those who support ESG say it is merely a means of getting important information to investors and that the SEC’s green accounting mandate and permissive approach toward ESG shareholder proposals is simply the free market at work.

“Investors need to know how companies are addressing climate risk, how they pay their employees, how diverse their workforce is, and more investors want this information, because it’s good for the performance of their investments, which is also good for society,” Waters said. “Rest assured that committed Democrats will continue to thwart this anti-capitalist, anti-investor, anti-business and anti-American effort.”

But ESG critics say there’s more to it than that.

“ESG efforts are not primarily about providing information,” Scott Shepard, director at the National Center for Public Policy Research, told The Epoch Times. “They’re about forcing companies to adopt political-schedule decarbonization, equity-based discrimination and hard-left positions on social policy.”

According to Will Hild, executive director of Consumers’ Research, much of the information that comes from environmental or racial audits that companies are compelled to produce will not be used to increase shareholder value but rather “to give far-left activists a cudgel to use against these companies” via lawsuits, negative publicity campaigns, and additional shareholder proposals.

The Proxy Agent Duopoly

The proxy agency market is a duopoly in which ISS and Glass Lewis together represent more than 90 percent of the market.

“Both earlier and recent regulatory actions by the Securities and Exchange Commission have created a duopoly in the market for proxy advisory services and powerful incentives for firms and funds to retain proxy advisors and to adopt their recommendations often on an automatic basis,” Benjamin Zycher, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told lawmakers.

“The advisors themselves have weak incentives to consider the fiduciary interests of shareholders and fund participants, thus freeing them to indulge their own political preferences and little or no cost to themselves,” Zycher said. “Unsurprisingly, environmental social and government’s political objectives have come to influence proxy advice heavily.”

Steven Friedman, ISS general counsel, testified that ISS is a registered investment advisor that “provides institutional investors with objective, timely and expert proxy research and vote recommendations based on the proxy voting policies selected by the clients.”

“ISS and other proxy advisors play an important but narrow role in the proxy voting process,” Friedman said. “It’s the client who creates and selects the voting policy guidelines that reflect their own fiduciary obligations and investments strategies.”

A 2018 report by the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance stated that “proxy advisory firms have significant influence over the voting decisions of institutional investors and the governance choices of publicly traded companies. However, it is not clear that the recommendations of these firms are correct and generally lead to better outcomes for companies and their shareholders.”

According to this report, ISS and Glass Lewis are able to swing between 10 percent and 30 percent of shareholder votes in line with their recommendations.

A 2018 report by the American Council for Capital Formation stated that 175 asset managers, with more than $5 trillion in assets under management, followed the advice of ISS more than 95% of the time.

A July 12 Wall Street Journal article stated that both ISS and Glass Lewis supported an audit of Starbucks’ employment practices this year, which shareholders passed with a 52 percent majority, and that the duopoly backed a racial equity audit at McDonald’s that passed with 55 percent support.

Policy recommendations included breaking up the proxy advisor duopoly and passing laws to check the administrative overreach of financial regulators like the SEC.

“One thing they should do is look at why it’s a duopoly in the first place,” Hild said. “Generally speaking, we don’t allow that in any major industries and certainly not something as big and important as the proxy advising services.”

“I urge Congress not to focus on the large asset managers, BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard,” Zycher stated. “Their incentives are roughly efficient, however silly their public pronouncements.

“I urge Congress instead to reform the SEC regulatory framework,” Zycher said. “I urge Congress to enact legislation constraining the efforts of regulatory agencies to pursue climate policies not authorized in the law, uninformed by actual evidence and justified on the basis of fundamentally dishonest benefit-cost analysis.

“Such regulatory efforts continue to engender vast costs and no benefits.”

Article cross-posted from our premium news partners at The Epoch Times.

“I don’t know what the hell that is, but it’s working,” Biden stated at a June 17 union rally in Philadelphia, begging the question: what is Bidenomics, and is it working?

According to a White House statement, Bidenomics rests on three pillars: massive “smart” government spending on renewable energy and semiconductors, support for unions and domestic manufacturing, and promoting competition. As a result, the White House states, “our economy has added more than 13 million jobs—including nearly 800,000 manufacturing jobs—and we’ve unleashed a manufacturing and clean energy boom.”

The Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors and Science (CHIPS) Act of 2022 allocates $280 billion in federal spending to bolster U.S. semiconductor manufacturing. The Infrastructure Act of 2021 allocated more than $65 billion for “clean energy” projects. And the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act allocated an additional $394 billion for clean energy in the form of tax incentives, loans, and grants.

“I would define it as trickle-down big government,” Jonathan Williams, chief economist at the American Legislative Exchange Council, told The Epoch Times. “The common thread of this administration has been growth and expansion of government power, and certainly big government spending.”

According to National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, when Biden took office, “America’s industrial base had been hollowed out. The vision of public investment that had energized the American project in the postwar years—and indeed for much of our history—had faded.“

Sullivan, who, despite his focus on security issues, has become a spokesman for Bidenomics, has been highly critical of what has been called “Reaganomics,” or a platform of tax cuts, trade liberalization and deregulation.

“There was one assumption at the heart of all of this policy: that markets always allocate capital productively and efficiently,” Sullivan said during an April speech at the Brookings Institution.

“President Biden … believes that building a twenty-first-century clean-energy economy is one of the most significant growth opportunities of the twenty-first century,” he stated. “But that to harness that opportunity, America needs a deliberate, hands-on investment strategy to pull forward innovation, drive down costs, and create good jobs.”

Despite the administration’s argument that government is best positioned to direct private industry, some critics say that waste and failure are the hallmarks of government industrial policy.

Political Investors

“The government is not in the business of making good investments,” economist Arthur Laffer, a former advisor to Presidents Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump as well as U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, told The Epoch Times. “That’s not what they should be doing,” he said.

“These guys are not good investors; they’re political investors,” Laffer said. The more the government seeks to influence the private sector, the more the private sector will orient itself toward producing what the government wants versus what consumers want.

“Bidenomics is nothing more than the application of government intervention to guide, direct and restructure the economy as the White House thinks it should be structured,” Steve Hanke, economics professor at Johns Hopkins University, told The Epoch Times.

“This type of interventionism flies under the rubric of ‘industrial policy.’ It’s where government picks winners and losers by using levers of government policy, like taxes subsidies, regulations, tariffs, quotas, and even outright bans.”

Recent examples of government ventures into private industry include Solyndra, a California maker of solar panels that received $535 million in federal loan guarantees from the Obama administration before going bankrupt.

Under Bidenomics, automakers are being pushed by a combination of consumer subsidies, manufacturing grants, and ever-tightening emissions regulations to switch their production from gasoline-powered cars and trucks to electric vehicles (EVs). However, there is scant evidence that enough consumers will switch to EVs to justify the investments or that carmakers will be able to source enough lithium, cobalt, and other minerals to build EV batteries in large quantities, or that the U.S. electric grid can build enough new generation capacity and connect enough charging stations to charge EVs at scale.

At the same time, the Biden administration is working to reduce domestic production of oil, gas, and coal in favor of wind and solar, with the same supply issues that automakers face. The required minerals for wind turbines and solar panels are typically mined in countries that may not be friendly to the United States, and it has created a heavy dependence on China, which controls most of the refining of these minerals.

According to Hanke, who served on Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisors, “Bidenomics is nothing new. Advocates of industrial policy in the 1980s used to latch onto Japan as a model for industrial policy, arguing that it contributed to Japan’s emergence as an economic power after World War II.

“But since the last three lost decades in Japan, the industrial policy advocates have gone radio silent,” Hanke said. “It’s hard to imagine a more misguided way to make decisions than to put them in the hands of those who pay no price for being wrong.”

Trillions in New Spending

To date, the Biden administration has overseen more than $4 trillion in new spending, of which $1.6 trillion was passed by Congress on a partisan basis, $1.4 trillion was passed on a bipartisan basis, and another $1.1 trillion came from Biden’s executive actions. Despite this spending, the White House claimed in March that “the President’s Budget improves the fiscal outlook by reducing the deficit by nearly $3 trillion over the next decade.”

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) sees it differently, however.

“Under the President’s FY 2023 budget, the debt would grow be allowed to grow by $16 trillion over ten years, or $50,000 of debt per American citizen,” the CBO reported in March. “Under CBO’s current projections, the gross federal debt would increase from $31 trillion today (123 percent of GDP) to $52 trillion (132 percent of GDP) in 2033.”

“Probably the worst part of Bidenomics is the enormous increase in spending,” Laffer said. “I never could have guessed anyone would have overspent like that.

“If you look at the national debt-to-GDP or any other measure, it’s gone way, way up,” he said. “This is an egregious reversal of what would be good economics.”

Tax Policy Under Biden

“Forty years of handing out excessive tax cuts to the wealthy and big corporations had been a bust,” Biden stated. By contrast, Bidenomics “is about building an economy from the bottom up and the middle out, not the top down.”

While most of the tax hikes that Biden called for have so far failed to get through Congress, critics argue that Americans have experienced significant tax hikes nonetheless, due to another economic phenomenon to carry the president’s name: “Bidenflation.”

“The inflation that has come in under Biden has pushed capital gains tax rates way up, because we have illusory capital gains that are now subject to capital gains taxation,” Laffer said. Because of inflation, he said, the nominal value of assets has increased dramatically, even though in terms of purchasing power “it’s the same thing.”

This results in a “tax on the illusory capital gains,” he said. Inflation has also pushed Americans into higher income tax brackets, despite the fact that wage gains often failed to keep up with rising prices, leaving Americans poorer but facing higher tax liabilities.

“If you look at the corporate rate, it’s still what it was when Trump left; and as you look at the personal income tax rates, 37 percent is still the highest,” Laffer said. “But if you look at all the inflation induced tax rate increases, they’ve been quite substantial.”

And this is in addition to the effective tax of inflation itself, which drives up the cost of goods and services as the dollar loses its value. Inflation was cited as the main reason why 76 percent of Americans polled in an Associated Press-University of Chicago survey in May had a negative view of Biden’s economic policies.

“There’s nothing that can bring the economy to its knees faster, and more damagingly, than an unhinged paper currency and high inflation,” Laffer said.

Under Bidenomics, the White House asserts, “America has seen the strongest growth since the pandemic of any leading economy in the world. Inflation has fallen for 11 straight months and has come down by more than half.”

As is often the case with statistics, however, the time period you consider colors what the numbers show. While the official inflation rate, according to the consumer price index (CPI), came down from a high of 9.1 percent in June 2022 to the current rate of about 4 percent, it remains well above pre-pandemic levels of below 2 percent.

Many attribute escalating prices to unprecedented levels of government spending, coupled with policies that discouraged the production of oil and gas, driving up the cost of gasoline and diesel, fertilizer, food, and transportation, although the Biden administration has blamed the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The story is similar to economic growth under Biden. After U.S. GDP fell by 2.8 percent in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and government lockdowns, America’s economy roared back to a positive 5.9 percent GDP growth in 2021 once lockdowns were lifted and businesses rushed to rehire laid-off workers.

Following this burst, however, the United States has underperformed against most other industrialized countries. While the average global GDP growth rate for 2022 was 3.1 percent, according to the World Bank, the U.S. GDP growth rate in 2022 lagged behind the rest of the world at 2.1 percent. Among “leading economies,” the U.K.’s GDP grew by 4.1 percent; France’s by 2.6 percent; Sweden’s by 2.6 percent; Spain’s by 5.5 percent; Mexico’s by 3.1 percent; and Canada’s by 3.4 percent. Germany, at 1.8 percent, was one of the few industrialized countries that underperformed the United States.

Notably, GDP also includes government spending, which hit record levels under the Biden administration.

Employment Remains a Bright Spot

According to the White House statement, “under Bidenomics, the unemployment rate fell below 4%,” and the abundance of jobs is certainly one of the bright spots of the current economy. Here too, however, critics say there are clouds.

The labor participation rate, which is the percentage of able-bodied people seeking work, hit a high mark just above 67 percent in the year 2000. It fell to a low of 62.5 percent in 2015, before climbing back to 63.3 percent in 2020, under Trump. It then plummeted to 60 percent during the pandemic and is currently at 62.6 percent under Biden, the same level as during the Obama administration.

Many blame an expansion of social programs and unemployment benefits for the number of Americans leaving the labor market. This also makes the unemployment rate seem lower because those not even seeking work are not counted in unemployment statistics.

“Encouraging people not to work has reduced the unemployment rate, that’s true,” Laffer said. “It’s also reduced the participation rate. It’s reduced both the employment rate and the unemployment rate, which is the antithesis of what we want in a healthy economy.”

Gravy Train for the Super-Rich

Biden claimed that tax cutting under Reagan only benefitted the rich and “hollowed out the middle class.” By contrast, a central pillar of Bidenomics is “empowering and educating workers to grow the middle class,” according to the White House statement.

But some economists argue that Biden has it backwards, that government intervention makes the private economy even more of an insider game at the expense of everyday Americans.

“The one thing we know for certain about big government and more government spending is that it provides a gravy train for the super-rich, rent-seeking class,” Hanke said.

“The surge in government spending over the last five years has resulted in a huge jump in U.S. billionaires’ wealth, from 15 to 18 percent of GDP,” he said. “So much for the equity arguments that are draped over Bidenomics.”

“The best way to make profits today in the private sector is to lobby the government for a contract or a regulation to help you,” Laffer said. “If you tell a business that was profit-focused, that you can make the most profits by lobbying government, of course, they’re going to do that.”

Regulation and Centralized Authority

The other major component of Bidenomics is a sharp increase in government regulation. This includes new draconian emissions regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), new appliance regulations from the Department of Energy (DOE), and new Securities and Exchange (SEC) requirements for producing audited reports on CO2 emissions for all listed companies.

A June report by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity estimated that the added costs of new Biden administration regulations, “which include both their current and expected future costs, amount to almost $10,000 per household.” By contrast, the Trump administration reduced regulatory costs on Americans by $11,000 per household, the study stated.

The report stated that, as reported by federal agencies themselves, the cost of new regulations they were implementing under Biden summed to $173 billion per year, although the report estimated that the costs were actually much higher, at $616 billion per year.

Beyond costs, critics charge that the Biden administration has been particularly aggressive in attempting to centralize authority within federal agencies at the expense of local government.

“One of our greatest criticisms of this administration’s policy agenda is that everything has the common thread of trying to federalize decisions in Washington, and central government versus allowing the states to compete with each other,” Williams said. The Biden administration is “changing the incentive structure for many states in favor of a big government agenda.”

Historically, American states have been free to compete with each other on policies, and this has allowed for experimentation in terms of what works best. Business and workers typically respond by investing in and relocating to states that provide the most attractive conditions in terms of living costs, tax rates, regulations, and quality of life, and the last several years has seen a flood out of progressive states like California, New York, and Illinois, in favor of conservatives states like Texas and Florida.

“[Biden’s] policy agenda has been to undermine state autonomy and federalism wherever possible, whether that is federalizing elections, banning state right-to-work laws [or] telling states you can’t cut taxes if you take federal bailout dollars,” Williams said. “The Biden administration has flooded state budgets with unprecedented amounts of federal aid.

“While that federal aid is temporary, the strings that are attached to it are not temporary.”

Sound off about this article on the Economic Collapse Substack.

Article cross-posted from our premium news partners at The Epoch Times.

“We feel very strongly that we cannot wait for the next emergency to find out how well the pandemic accord and the IHR amendments will work; we need to know now,” Joy Phumaphi, co-chair of the GPMB, stated on May 22. “We therefore suggest that Member States, together with other key stakeholders, carry out a simulation exercise based on the draft accord and draft IHR amendments later this year, before they are finalized and adopted.”

International negotiations to centralize pandemic-related action within the WHO have been ongoing throughout this spring. They include a “zero draft” WHO pandemic accord and amendments to International Health Regulations (IHRs), as well as discussions among various WHO subcommittees, U.N. organizations, and finance arms like the World Bank. The current round of negotiations on the pandemic accord and IHR amendments have gone on behind closed doors in Geneva, but statements from some of the ancillary groups like the GPMB may shed light on the tone of the discussions.

Phumaphi said that the GPMB’s “Manifesto for Preparedness” includes three “tests” for the treaty and IHR amendments. These are whether the treaty and IHR amendments are “sufficiently powerful,” whether they “deliver equity and coherence,” and whether they “have robust mechanisms for monitoring and accountability.”

Ambassador Pamela Hamamoto is currently negotiating terms of the WHO pandemic accord on behalf of the United States. While the language of the accord and IHR revisions is often opaque and bureaucratic, analysts say the ultimate goal of the reforms is to vest more pandemic authority within the WHO and have this authority extend beyond pandemic emergencies.

“The trajectory is about centralizing power over health emergencies,” David Bell, a public health physician and former WHO staffer specializing in epidemic policy, told The Epoch Times. “It will centralize authority within the WHO, particularly in the director general, and it will broaden the scope to what they call One Health.”

Negotiations Proceed in Secret

In April, delegates from the United States agreed with a Chinese proposal that new IHR drafts would not be shared with the public. Hamamoto stated that “at this stage, I have some concern about sharing the draft to all stakeholders given where we are in the process.”

In response, several nonprofit organizations and health experts wrote a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and Secretary of State Antony Blinken protesting the secrecy of the negotiations.

“The attempt to create a veil of secrecy now surrounding the substantive and technical text-based negotiations on the WHO pandemic treaty sets a dangerous precedent for norm-setting at the multilateral level,” they wrote. “It also undermines trust in the process at a time when attacks on the WHO and on the pandemic accord are increasing.”

The GPMB’s Manifesto for Preparedness states that “the success of these reforms will largely be dependent on the adoption of a coordinated, One Health approach to PPPR that involves all countries, international and regional organizations, financial institutions, and the private sector.”

PPPR is the WHO acronym for pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response. “One Health” refers to the broadening of pandemic response to potentially include things like farming, poverty, and climate change, which could either cause or exacerbate outbreaks, or impair peoples’ health in other ways.

“One Health is anything in the biosphere that affects human well-being in its current definition,” Bell said. Current terms being negotiated, he said, would not only broaden the scope of the WHO’s mandate but would also grant it authority to act when a pandemic “threat” is perceived, as opposed to an actual pandemic emergency.

“They are already putting in place a very broad surveillance mechanism,” Bell said. “They’re talking about two and a half billion dollars a year, which is three times the WHO budget just to run this. And this will look for any threats such as viral variant, which is [part of] nature, I mean, these happen all the time. Then they’ll be able to say essentially, that these are potential threats, therefore we need to lock down a population.”

The latest publicly available draft of the WHO pandemic accord includes the terms “One Health approach” and “One Health surveillance,” but to date the definition of those terms has been left blank. However, the “zero draft” states that One Health encompasses “the interconnection between people, animals, plants and their shared environment, for which a coherent, integrated and unifying approach should be strengthened and applied with an aim to sustainably balance and optimize the health of people, animals, and ecosystems.”

According to the GPMB’s Manifesto for Preparedness, the WHO must be “empowered with the responsibility, authority and accountability to fulfill its leadership role at the center of health emergency preparedness.” Among the top priorities, the manifesto stated, is that “access to medical countermeasures is based on need; resources, information and data are accessible to all; priorities are driven by the needs of people and communities and address gender equity.”

The Global Preparedness Monitoring Board was established in 2018 by the WHO and the World Bank, and is tasked with monitoring the world’s preparedness to respond to pandemics. It is “comprised of globally recognized leaders and experts from a wide range of sectors, including global health, veterinary epidemiology, environment, human rights, economics, law, gender, and development.”

In its first report in September 2019, the GPMB predicted a respiratory pandemic that would cause millions of deaths and immense damage to the world economy.

“The world is at acute risk for devastating regional or global disease epidemics or pandemics that not only cause loss of life but upend economies and create social chaos,” the 2019 report stated. Later that year, in December 2019, a local scientist identified a mysterious pneumonia-like illness in Wuhan, China. Four months later, in March 2020, the WHO declared a pandemic from what is now known as COVID-19.

Phumaphi, a former Minister of Health of Botswana, was the interim co-CEO of the Clinton Health Access Initiative before becoming co-chair of the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board in September 2022. In announcing the new leadership, the GPMB stated: “With negotiations underway to create new global health emergency governance structures, including the Pandemic Treaty and newly established Financial Intermediary Fund, the GPMB has emphasized the need for a robust independent monitoring mechanism to shine a light on key gaps in preparedness within the global health architecture.”

Article cross-posted from our premium news partners at The Epoch Times.

Shortly thereafter, on May 19, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus issued a report to member nations stating that, while the “re-emergence of epidemic-prone diseases continues to accelerate,” the WHO’s mandate regarding “health emergencies” must extend beyond pandemics to include hunger, poverty, ecological degradation, climate change, and social and economic inequalities.

The Director General wrote that member nations must establish a “global architecture for health emergency preparedness, prevention, response, and resilience (HEPR),” which includes “global governance, financing and HEPR systems.”

But GOP lawmakers disagreed with the WHO.

“International law does not trump our Constitution,” Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.) stated. “Biden cannot force Americans to follow laws and regulations not passed by our own federal government.”

“The World Health Organization pandemic treaty is very vague, it affects our sovereignty, and it could be exploited to tell Americans what kind of health care they need in the event of a global pandemic,” Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) said. The public forum was organized by Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) and included 18 House members.

Ambassador Pamela Hamamoto, on behalf of the United States, is currently negotiating terms of the WHO Pandemic Accord, which is scheduled to be signed by the 194 WHO member nations in 2024, as well as amendments to International Health Regulations (IHRs), also under the auspices of the WHO. In sum, these negotiations are intended to produce legally binding treaties and agreements that will coordinate a united response among member nations during a “health emergency,” with much of the decision-making authority vested in the WHO.

According to these agreements, the WHO would have the authority to, for example, declare when a pandemic is in effect and to coordinate medical supply chains to ensure equitable distribution among member nations. The agreements also speak to global coordination between the WHO and national health authorities like the CDC to set health policies, and coordination among governments on issues like fighting “misinformation.”

Failing Upwards

The preamble to the “zero draft” of the WHO Pandemic Accord states that this treaty is necessary because of the “catastrophic failure of the international community in showing solidarity and equity in response to the coronavirus disease.” But critics say that the WHO’s failures during the past several years are a reason to reduce its authority, rather than give it more.

“The World Health Organization is one of the most corrupt, incompetent and, after COVID-19, the most thoroughly discredited institutions on the global stage,” Eric Burlison (R-Mo.) stated. “And yet, one of Joe Biden’s first things that he did was to bring the United States back into this corrupt organization.”

On July 6, 2020, former President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the WHO and moved to cut off U.S. funding. Biden reversed this order immediately upon taking office.

Calling for the United States to withdraw from the WHO once again, House Republicans this week charged that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has undue influence in the WHO’s affairs.

“The House Foreign Affairs Committee issued a report on the CCP and its relationship with the World Health Organization with regard to COVID,” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) said. “They said it’s beyond doubt that the CCP actively engaged in a coverup designed to obfuscate dates, hide relevant public health information, and suppress doctors and journalists who attempted to warn the world.”

The WHO, Biggs said, “responded to the CCP’s coverup by praising the CCP for their transparency … and repeatedly parroted CCP talking points.”

Republicans have introduced legislation this year in Congress, including the WHO Withdrawal Act that would end U.S. membership in the WHO, and the No Taxpayer Funding for the World Health Organization Act that would end America’s financial contributions to the WHO.

‘Greatest Intrusions on Civil Liberties in Peacetime History’

Negotiations with the WHO, which are taking place under a veil of secrecy, come in the wake of the COVID pandemic, which left many Americans concerned about government abuses of authority under the mantra of public health and safety.

Enumerating government abuses throughout the COVID pandemic, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote on May 18 in his opinion regarding Title 42 emergency decrees that “since March 2020, we may have experienced the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country.”

Gorsuch stated: “Executive officials across the country issued emergency decrees on a breathtaking scale. Governors and local leaders imposed lockdown orders forcing people to remain in their homes. They shuttered businesses and schools, public and private. They closed churches even as they allowed casinos and other favored businesses to carry on. They threatened violators not just with civil penalties but with criminal sanctions too. They surveilled church parking lots, recorded license plates, and issued notices warning that attendance at even outdoor services satisfying all state social-distancing and hygiene requirements could amount to criminal conduct. They divided cities and neighborhoods into color-coded zones, forced individuals to fight for their freedoms in court on emergency timetables, and then changed their color-coded schemes when defeat in court seemed imminent.

“Federal executive officials entered the act too … They deployed a public-health agency to regulate landlord-tenant relations nationwide. They used a workplace-safety agency to issue a vaccination mandate for most working Americans. They threatened to fire noncompliant employees, and warned that service members who refused to vaccinate might face dishonorable discharge and confinement. Along the way, it seems federal officials may have pressured social-media companies to suppress information about pandemic policies with which they disagreed.”

Operating in Secrecy

While the WHO’s Pandemic Accord and IHR amendments promote causes like equity and inclusion, they do not prioritize personal civil liberties, such as freedom of speech, assembly, privacy, religious faith, and having a vote in policy decisions, which are all central to America’s founding documents. For example, the current public draft of the IHR amendments, which states how the regulations will be implemented, has deleted the phrase “with full respect for the dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms of persons” and replaced it with “based on the principles of equity, inclusivity, coherence and in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities of the States Parties, taking into consideration their social and economic development.”

An attorney who is involved in drafting the WHO documents told The Epoch Times he believes this amendment was rejected during negotiations, but that claim cannot be confirmed because subsequent revisions to the IHRs are no longer available to the public. In April, delegates from the United States agreed with a Chinese proposal that new IHR drafts would not be shared with the public.

Hamamoto stated at the time that “at this stage, I have some concern about sharing the draft to all stakeholders given where we are in the process.” In response, several nonprofit organizations and health experts wrote a letter to Health & Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and Secretary of State Antony Blinken protesting the secrecy of the negotiations.

“The attempt to create a veil of secrecy now surrounding the substantive and technical text-based negotiations on the WHO pandemic treaty sets a dangerous precedent for norm-setting at the multilateral level,” the letter states. “It also undermines trust in the process at a time when attacks on the WHO and on the pandemic accord are increasing.”

While the U.S. Constitution requires Senate approval for international treaties, the “zero draft” of the WHO Pandemic Accord includes a clause that the accord will go into effect on a “provisional” basis as soon as it’s signed by delegates to the WHO and would, therefore, be legally binding on members without being ratified by legislatures. The amendments to the IHRs do not require Senate approval and would also be legally binding on the United States.

Other U.S. Representatives who spoke out this week against efforts to empower the WHO included Ronny Jackson (R-Texas), Chris Smith (R-N.J.), Brian Babin (R-Texas), Kevin Hern (R-Okla.), Thomas Tiffany (R-Wis.), Chip Roy (R-Texas), Eli Crane (R-Ariz.), Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), Eric Burlison (R-Mo.), Mary Miller (R-Ill.), Dan Bishop (R-N.C.), Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.), and Clay Higgins (R-La.).

Speaking alongside the House lawmakers, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) also criticized the WHO for what she said was its “agenda to sexualize children.”

“The WHO published international sexual education standards for children that included recommendations to teach infants-to-4-year-olds about the right to explore nakedness and teach 4-to-6-year-olds about early childhood masturbation,” Luna said. “What parent, what taxpayer thinks that this is normal? Frankly, if you’re supporting this, I think you’re a pervert and you need to stay completely away from children.”

Last week, two British newspapers reported on the WHO’s European guidelines on child sexuality, which stated that “sexuality education starts from birth.” The WHO guidance, the reports state, encourages “early childhood masturbation” at ages 0-4 years old.

A WHO representative reportedly defended the guidelines, saying they “reflect established psychological facts.” The UK government, however, rejected the WHO’s narrative.

“The UK Government does not recognize this WHO guidance and we don’t agree with its recommendations. We have not distributed or promoted it to schools,” a government spokesperson stated.

Article cross-posted from our premium news partners at The Epoch Times.

I am NOT a financial advisor, but I don’t think I’m tooting my own horn too much when I say I’ve been far more accurate about the economy than most of the “experts” over the last couple of years. This is why I was not in favor of moving wealth or retirement to precious metals in 2020 or any time before then. Things clearly changed and I started recommending an America First, fellowship-driven gold company last year for self-directed IRAs backed by physical precious metals. With that said, here’s Kevin Stocklin’s article…

President Joe Biden used his veto power on Monday to block a bipartisan action from Congress that would have prevented pension fund managers from investing retirees’ money according to environmental and social-justice criteria.

“There is extensive evidence showing that environmental, social, and governance factors can have a material impact on markets, industries, and businesses,” Biden stated.

However, despite attempts by its advocates to brand environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria as an effective risk-management tool, recent bank failures such as Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) suggest the opposite.

In defense of ESG, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that “America’s most successful asset managers and financial institutions have used ESG factors to minimize risk and maximize their clients’ returns. In fact, according to McKinsey, more than 90 percent of S&P 500 companies publish ESG reports today.”

This echoed a statement by Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan in 2020 that “our research shows that companies that do well on ESG end up doing better, or fail less.” Also advocating for ESG, The New York Times was quick to “fact check” critics who claimed that ESG was partly to blame for SVB’s demise.

In an op-ed titled, “No, ‘Wokeness’ Did Not Cause Silicon Valley Bank’s Collapse,” the Times argues that SVB “was not an outlier in its diversity goals or its ESG investments,” which is accurate as far as it goes. But the fact that most other financial institutions are doing the same thing is not reassuring to many who are concerned that ESG will now be used as a risk-management criteria for pensioners’ money.

Hiding Management Failures

“If management is focusing on ESG, then important functions like risk-management can easily fall to the wayside,” Aharon Friedman, a former senior counsel to the House Ways and Means Committee and former senior advisor to the Treasury Department, told The Epoch Times. “ESG metrics are inherently subjective and unquantifiable, so using ESG factors to measure a company’s performance can hide bad management practices.”

A cursory glance at SVB’s last two 10-K filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission underscores Friedman’s point. The bank’s balance sheet showed obvious red flags about how precarious its mismatch of assets and liabilities had become, and yet a substantial amount of management’s focus appeared to be on diversity and its exposure to climate change.

From 2020 to 2021, the bank’s holdings of U.S. Treasurys and mortgage-backed securities ballooned from $49 billion to $128 billion. These mostly fixed-rate longer-term assets were funded by short-term deposits, which increased from $102 billion to $189 billion that year, creating an enormous liquidity mismatch for a bank with $16.6 billion in equity and $211 billion in total assets.

These numbers were down slightly by the end of 2022 as depositors began their exodus, but remained in about the same perilous proportion. Given the mismatches on its balance sheet, if interest rates were to increase, which would cause the value of fixed-rate bonds to fall, SVB would be unable to make enough from selling its assets to pay out depositors.

And yet according to the risk factors detailed in its 10-K filings, SVB management didn’t appear to be particularly concerned about that. When detailing the bank’s most important risk factors, SVB’s 10K report dedicated three paragraphs to its exposure to climate change.

The bank’s filing states that because “federal and state regulatory authorities, investors, and other third parties have increasingly viewed financial institutions as important in addressing the risks related to climate change … we have announced commitments related to the management of climate risks and the transition to a less carbon-dependent economy.”

Regulators Push ESG on Banks

SVB was not wrong about regulatory authorities pushing ESG compliance. The Federal reserve Bank of San Francisco, which regulated SVB, states, “The impacts of a changing climate—including the frequency and magnitude of severe weather events—affects each of our three core roles: conducting monetary policy; regulating and supervising the banking system; and ensuring a safe and sound payment system.”

Regarding racial equity, the San Francisco Fed states, “Our Framework for Change is our commitment to taking action that will result in greater racial and ethnic equity in our organization and the communities we serve across the Federal Reserve’s Twelfth District.”

Meanwhile, SVB’s exposure to interest-rate risk—one of the most basic but more mundane aspects of bank risk management—became a material problem in March 2022, when the Federal Reserve announced its determination to fight runaway inflation with the first in an ongoing series of interest-rate hikes. Looking back at the end of that year, the bank noted in its 2023 filing that “increased interest rates can have a material effect on the company’s business … For instance, increases in interest rates have resulted, and may continue to result in, decreases in the fair value of our [available for sale] fixed-income investment portfolio.” But it had little else to say on the subject and nothing that suggested a sense of urgency.

According to one report, BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, warned SVB in early 2022 that the bank’s risk controls were “substantially below” what they should have been and offered to assist SVG in managing its portfolio risks. But its offer was rebuffed.

According to another report, SVB’s chief risk officer, Laura Izurieta, stepped down in April 2022, and the bank continued on without a replacement until Kim Olson took the job in January 2023. By that time, interest rates were substantially higher, and there was little the bank could do to right itself.

SVB Earns Top ESG Governance Scores

Prior to its collapse, SVB was a strong advocate of ESG criteria, both from an environmental and social-justice perspective, and it appeared to buy into the notion, echoed by President Biden this week, that ESG was an appropriate risk-management tool. Indeed, according the S&P’s ESG scoring system, SVB was rated an 89 out of 100 in the area of “corporate governance,” just shy of the “industry best” score, which is 91, and well above the “industry mean” score of 51.

Morningstar, one of the top ESG rating agencies, had given SVB a rating of 7.9 out of 10, or “leader,” in the governance category.

“In the case of SVB, the corporate governance management measurement was assessed before the public discovery of the bank’s collapse on March 10, 2023,” a Morningstar representative told The Epoch Times. “The news initiated an urgent review of its rating, resulting in the overall risk rating score increasing significantly with the assignment of a severe controversy (another layer in the methodology) and reflected in our public ratings on March 15. This controversy shows that even companies with leading corporate governance practices on paper are not immune to significant controversial events.”

SVB was able to earn such a high governance rating because of policies like its dedication to racial and gender criteria in hiring and promotion. The bank’s website notes that “45 percent of our board of directors are women, including our new chair as of April 21, 2022.” It further states that “we aim to create equity in hiring, performance management, benefits, supplier diversity, donations and volunteering,” and “we promote inclusion through cultural awareness celebrations, employee advocacy networks, DEI [diversity, equity, inclusion] trainings, employee surveys, and focus groups.”

But while SVB was outperforming according to ESG management principles, some argue that it was doing so at the cost of its most essential responsibilities.

“Insofar as ESG involves trying to show that your board and staff are ‘diverse,’ it means that you are willing to ascribe considerable importance to things like skin color or sex in selecting your people,” Samuel Gregg, author and Senior Research Fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research, told The Epoch Times. “The problem is that people’s degree of financial expertise has nothing to do with such things. If you are willing to trade off financial knowledge and experience for ethnicity and gender, that means you are not giving financial expertise the priority that it should have in banking and finance.”

Credit Suisse, which faced collapse and was rescued by Swiss rival UBS on March 20, had also been promoting its adherence to ESG principles. It created a chief sustainability officer position and announced: “Our organizational structure is designed to ensure that ESG standards are embedded across regions and divisions in our client-based solutions as well as in our own operations as a company.”

Credit Suisse had so many management failures leading up to its collapse that ESG can hardly be blamed. However, it raises another issue about ESG, which is the extent to which corporate managers use it to cover up for underperformance.

An August 2021 study by the University of South Carolina and the University of Northern Iowa found that focusing on non-quantifiable ESG goals over financial results “provides managers with a convenient excuse that reduces accountability for poor firm performance.” In contrast to Biden’s claim that evidence proves the value of ESG investing, this report found that there was a correlation between CEO’s underperformance and how vocal they were in supporting ESG goals.

Disputing the ‘Extensive Evidence’ for ESG

Recently, even firms that had once championed ESG criteria, are now backpedaling.

Testifying before the Texas state senate last December, State Street chief investment officer Lori Heinel said, “I have no evidence that this [ESG] is good for returns in any time frame. In fact, we’ve seen the evidence to be quite contrary. Last year, if you didn’t own energy companies, you did miserably compared to broad benchmarks. The year before, that was quite the opposite … but that was just a happenstance, that’s not because it’s a good investment.”

Last month, Vanguard CEO Tim Buckley said, “Our research indicates that ESG investing does not have any advantage over broad-based investing.”

Meanwhile, a Harvard University report titled, “An Inconvenient Truth About ESG Investing,” found that ESG investing actually hurts returns. “ESG funds certainly perform poorly in financial terms,” the report stated.

SVB may have been no more compliant than its peers regarding its allegiance to ESG dogma, but the problem was that it was too weak to afford losing focus on its core business. Given its smaller size, concentrated depositor base, and undiversified asset portfolio, it could not survive having an unserious risk management structure in place.

SVB depositors were ultimately bailed out by federal regulators, but retirees, who will be affected by Biden’s new rule allowing ESG into Americans’ pensions, have no such guarantees. And when it comes to risk management, pension investors are in a significantly different position than bank depositors. They are the equity holders, who are last in line and who typically get wiped out when companies fail.

“The priority of anyone managing pension funds is to ensure that they create the profit and shareholder value that allows people who have saved to enjoy a comfortable retirement—period,” Gregg said. “If ESG distracts pension fund managers from pursuing that goal, they are doing a grave disservice to present and future retirees.”

Article cross-posted from our premium news partners at The Epoch Times.

The draft accord, which would be “legally binding” on all 194 member nations, gives the WHO the authority to declare pandemics and submits member countries to “the central role of the WHO as the directing and coordinating authority on international health work,” in areas like lockdowns, treatments, medical supply chains, surveillance, and “disinformation and false news,” once a pandemic is declared.

Seventeen U.S. senators, led by Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), introduced the “No WHO Pandemic Preparedness Treaty Without Senate Approval Act” on Feb 15, which states that the pandemic accord must be deemed a treaty, thus requiring the consent of a supermajority of the Senate, which is two-thirds, or 67 senators. The legislation comes as the WHO gears up to present what it calls the “zero draft” of the accord, negotiated with the help of U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, to all member nations on Feb. 27 to agree final terms.

Other sponsors of the bill included Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Rick Scott (R-Fla.), John Hoeven (R-N.D.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Steve Daines (R-Mont.), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), Mike Braun (R-Ind.), Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), and Katie Britt (R-Ala.).

“The WHO, along with our federal health agencies, failed miserably in their response to COVID-19,” Sen. Johnson stated. “This failure should not be rewarded with a new international treaty that would increase the WHO’s power at the expense of American sovereignty.”

But some doubt this bill, even if approved, will stop the WHO accord from going into effect once President Joe Biden signs it.

“With all due respect to the sponsoring senators, that will not do the trick,” Francis Boyle, professor of international law at Illinois University, told The Epoch Times. The reason, he said, is that the WHO accord is drafted specifically to circumvent the Senate-approval process, and Congress instead should immediately withhold its yearly contributions to the WHO and take the United States out of the organization.

Currently, the United States is the largest contributor to the WHO’s $6.72 billion budget, of which $1.25 billion is for “health emergencies.” The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the second largest donor to the WHO, contributing 9 percent of its budget in 2021; China is the third.

Will Biden Need Senate Approval for WHO Accord?

It remains unclear if the Biden administration will need Senate approval for the WHO accord to go into effect. The accord itself states that it will become effective and legally binding on member states “provisionally,” as soon as it is signed and before any national legislatures approve it.

“The Biden administration can indicate that it is provisionally bringing this treaty into force upon the mere signature of the treaty,” Boyle said. “Hence, it will come into force here in the United States provisionally until the Senate decides whether or not it is going to give its advice and consent to the treaty. I personally know of no other U.S. treaty that provides for its provisional application pending the U.S. Senate giving its advice and consent to the treaty.”

While the U.S. Constitution states that the president can make treaties “provided two-thirds of the senators present concur,” American presidents have increasingly been signing international agreements without Senate consent, and those agreements have taken effect in the United States regardless.

According to the Senate’s website: “Treaties to which the United States is a party also have the force of federal legislation, forming part of what the Constitution calls ‘the supreme Law of the Land’ … In recent decades, presidents have frequently entered the United States into international agreements without the advice and consent of the Senate. These are called ‘executive agreements.’ Though not brought before the Senate for approval, executive agreements are still binding on the parties under international law.”

A report by Justia, a legal analysis and marketing firm, states that “the executive agreement has surpassed in number and perhaps in international influence the treaty formally signed, submitted for ratification to the Senate, and proclaimed upon ratification.

“During the first half-century of its independence, the United States was party to 60 treaties but to only 27 published executive agreements,” the report states. “Between 1939 and 1993, executive agreements comprised more than 90 percent of the international agreements concluded.”

The U.S. Supreme Court has on several occasions supported the notion that these executive agreements constitute federal law and supersede state laws and regulations. This includes State of Missouri v. Holland, which ruled that treaties supersede state laws, and United States v. Belmont, which ruled that executive agreements without Senate consent are legally binding on Americans. Under the U.S. Constitution, health policy falls under state jurisdiction, but the WHO pandemic accord may be a way to bring health policy under the jurisdiction of the federal government, once the WHO declares a pandemic.

Increasingly, the Biden administration is looking toward international agreements to do what it can’t achieve through Congress. Most recently, having failed to increase corporate taxes in Congress, the Biden administration entered into an international agreement with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to set minimum tax levels on all corporations within signatory countries. While GOP lawmakers said the agreement had “no path forward” toward approval as a treaty, provisions written into the agreement allowed foreign countries to tax U.S.-based corporate profits as a punitive measure, if senators do not approve it.

Article cross-posted from our premium news partners at The Epoch Times.