‘Don’t Buy the Rebrand’: Vivek’s Warning About ESG Coverup on Fox Business

August 1st, 2023 5:08 PM

GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy broke down some of the insidious abuses of the push for ESG investing on Fox Business last week.

During a July 28th appearance on Making Money with Charles Payne, Ramaswamy explained how pro-ESG activists seek to conceal their exploitation of ordinary Americans for leftist pressure campaigns. “The reality is they’re rebranding it from ESG, they’ll call it ‘sustainability’ or ‘conscious capitalism,’ don’t buy the rebrand,” Ramaswamy warned. “It's the same thing of using the money of everyday retirees and Americans to advance political agendas that they could not get through the front door of Congress.”

Specifically, Vivek explained to Payne that state pension funds managers have exploited their power over the money of others, saying that “it's pension funds, like CalPERS of the California state or New York state pension funds, tell these asset managers that they can’t manage their money unless they’ve signed up to the Climate Action 100+ accords unless they’ve adopted these racial equity audits.”

Ramaswamy called out Pro-ESG behemoths BlackRock and Vanguard for hypocritically investing in Chinese coal. Ramaswamy said, “BlackRock and Vanguard shun the U.S. coal industry yet invest billions in a Chinese company whose name is literally ‘China Coal Energy Company,’ without saying a peep about ESG over there.” 

Both BlackRock and Vanguard are the number one and number two foreign investors in Chinese coal in 2021. BlackRock has signed on to a net-zero pledge, which Vanguard signed onto but then withdrew from. BlackRock CEO Larry Fink is such a radical supporter of ESG that he has publicly stated that “you have to force behaviors” on the social elements of ESG investing. 

Vivek continued, paraphrasing Harvard professor Adrian Vermeule, “The hypocrisy is staggering. Or perhaps it’s not hypocrisy, just hierarchy.”

MRC Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider also weighed in on the discrepancy, saying, “Either BlackRock doesn’t believe in what they’re selling, or it's just a stooge for the Chinese Communist Party.” 

Conservatives are under attack! Contact ABC News (818) 460-7477, CBS News (212) 975-3247 and NBC News (212) 664-6192 and tell them to report on the woke abuse of pension funds!