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As part of an investigation into possible collusion with climate activists, the House Judiciary Committee has sent letters to 60 U.S.-based asset management companies asking them for information about activities related to their membership with the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero and Net Zero Asset Managers.

Environmental, social and governance (ESG) policies have taken a beating this year, and with the incoming Trump administration expected to create an unfriendly atmosphere for ESG, next year will likely not go any better for “woke capitalism,” as the movement is sometimes called. 

“I think we’re on the cusp of a full-spectrum push across the entire federal government against this nonsense,” Will Held, executive director of Consumers’ Research, told Just the News. 

The House Judiciary letters Friday follow on the heels of a report earlier this month on a “pressure campaign” orchestrated by a “climate cartel” against ExxonMobil, and another this summer, alleging that a “climate cartel” is violating antitrust laws in the course of pressuring companies to adopt anti-fossil fuel, net-zero policies. 

The letters explain the committee is conducting oversight of the adequacy and enforcement of antitrust laws, and it has “uncovered evidence that financial institutions are colluding with climate activists through initiatives like the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) and the Net Zero Asset Managers (NZAM) initiative to collectively adopt and impose left-wing environmental, social, and governance (ESG)-related goals.” 

Altogether, the letter states, 325 asset manager signatories managing $57.5 trillion in assets are part of this “climate coalition.”

The letter asks the firms to provide the committee with information about their policies and actions as part of GFANZ and NZAM no later than Jan. 10. It also warns them to make efforts to preserve “all existing and future records and materials related to the topics addressed” in the letter. 

Bullies and threatens

As the Judiciary Committee is putting net-zero investor activism under a microscope, companies are signaling they were rethinking their commitments to its strategies.

Wells Fargo, Bloomberg reports, announced Friday it was pulling its membership from the Net-Zero Banking Alliance. The San Francisco-based firm has $603 billion in assets under management. Goldman Sachs Group Inc., with $2.8 trillion in assets under management, quit the group earlier this month. 

The House Judiciary report released this summer claims that Climate Action 100+, an investor group of more than 600 investors and nearly 170 companies, “bullies and threatens asset managers, weaponizing their climates to force them to join and obey the climate cartel.”

The goal of these actions was to get the companies to reduce their carbon emissions in line with the 2015 Paris Agreement, which the report argues forces companies to reduce output and increase prices to consumers.

Since the report was released, Climate Action 100+ has seen some big names depart the group, including JP Morgan, Chase and State Street, which left in February. BlackRock, with $11. 5 trillion in assets under management, also announced in February it was leaving the group. Though the firm stated it was transferring its participation in net-zero activities to BlackRock International. 

All this is on top of state-level anti-ESG legislation and state-level litigation against firms’ ESG activities. 

Brazen conspiracy

The incoming Trump administration is expected to create a regulatory environment supportive of the petroleum and mining industry, which will put it at odds with ESG climate goals. 

President-elect Donald Trump nominated Paul Atkins, CEO of Patomak Global Partners, to chair the Securities and Exchange Commission. Atkins, who served as SEC commissioner from 2002 to 2008, was among the former commissioners who signed a comment letter to the SEC in June 2022 critical of what was then a proposed climate-disclosure rule. 

In the letter to the SEC, Atkins and the others argued the proposal requires disclosures that aren’t material to financial concerns and “oversteps the Commission’s congressionally delegated regulatory authority.”  With some changes from the proposal, the controversial rule was finalized in March. Pending legal challenges from multiple parties, the SEC decided in April to stay the rule. 

Held, with Consumers’ Research, called the efforts of the asset management firms, in conjunction with the other members of Climate Action 100+, GFANZ and NZAM, the most “brazen antitrust conspiracy in U.S. history.” 

Trump’s pick to head the Federal Trade Commission, Andrew Ferguson, Hild said, will also push back against ESG. Along with a Republican-controlled legislature, Hild said he’s expecting a lot to be accomplished in the next few years. 

“It’s one thing to do these kinds of investigations when you don’t have the White House. You feel like it’s not going to go anywhere. It’s another thing, when you feel like this could get referred to an FTC enforcement action, or even a DOJ antitrust action,” Hild said. 

He said, while it’s encouraging that firms are voluntarily rescinding their participation in the climate investment groups, he doesn’t think it means they’ve reconsidered their commitments to its goals. 

“So it’s not a total victory when they pull out…It makes it tremendously harder, though, when they can’t coordinate. So this is still a huge victory as these people pull out, and I expect more of them to do so as they realize that the price they’re going to have to pay for being in these organizations is huge,” Hild said.