SCOOP: Republicans praise President Trump’s plan to neutralize woke voting power of the big three passive funds
The Trump administration’s plan to protect retirement savings by depoliticizing index fund influence is getting rave reviews — here’s why.
Republicans are praising the Trump administration’s plan, reported this week by the Wall Street Journal, to protect retirement savings by depoliticizing the influence of index funds like BlackRock and Vanguard over shareholders.
It is “wonderful news to hear that the White House is considering taking action to reign in woke Wall Street firms that have been micromanaging American businesses and undermining consumers by using their outsized influence to push a far left agenda,” Will Hild, who as the executive director of Consumers’ Research has led campaigns against index funds like BlackRock, told the Reporter.
“Asset managers like BlackRock, along with proxy advisors Glass Lewis and ISS, have misused and abused their positions as fiduciaries to further their own politics, taking the shares and votes of their clients and using them to bully boards and c-suites out of the business of serving their customers and instead forcing a noxious agenda down consumers’ throats,” Hild added. “Our hope is that the ultimate action is severe enough to curtail these bad actors. As BlackRock’s CEO Larry Fink infamously said, sometimes ‘you have to force behaviors’ to change.”
The Washington Reporter has covered the problem of passive investment funds dictating corporate policy for progressive purposes. At a recent Congressional hearing, Republicans slammed BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard for pushing far-left policies through the shareholder voting processes.
Now, the Trump administration is poised to act to protect retirees’ savings. The White House is reportedly also considering a “mirror voting” rule like the one proposed by Sen. Dan Sullivan (R., Alaska).
Officials are also “exploring limits on how index-fund managers are allowed to vote, seeking to curtail the power of such behemoths as BlackRock, Vanguard Group, and State Street…These three together own on behalf of clients roughly 30% or more of many of the biggest U.S. publicly traded companies,” the Journal reported.
Chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Paul Atkins recently stressed the importance of stopping passive investment funds from pushing politics on companies in a Fox Business interview with Maria Bartimoro.
“They are passive investors… where they get out of line is where they act to try to influence management,” Atkins said. “That’s just not their role.”
A Senate source praised the White House, telling the Reporter that “limiting the power of the woke passive investors is great policy and it’s great politics. The last thing seniors want is diminished returns because some DEI activist at State Street decided to vote for a shareholder proposal to make Exxon Mobil go carbon neutral by 2026.”