NAM to Congress: Exercise Robust Oversight of SEC Agenda

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s aggressive rulemaking agenda would impose costly burdens on manufacturers and hamper capital formation, the NAM told the House Committee on Financial Services Tuesday.

What’s going on: At SEC Chair Gary Gensler’s first House oversight hearing in a year and a half, Republican lawmakers questioned Gensler about his “aggressive regulatory agenda,” according to The Hill.

That agenda consists of 53 proposed regulations, nine of which are particularly concerning for manufacturers, according to the NAM.
The SEC is attempting to mandate unworkable climate and cybersecurity disclosures, empower proxy advisory firms and shareholder activists, force private businesses to make public disclosures and limit efficient capital allocation.

The climate rule: The SEC’s proposed climate rule took center stage for much of Tuesday’s hearing.

The NAM has “called on the SEC to ax a provision that would place new reporting burdens [related to so-called “Scope 3” emissions] on private businesses that are part of a public company’s supply chain. Gensler said Tuesday that the SEC is taking those comments into consideration when crafting its rule,” The Hill reported.

Why it matters: Public and private companies are already feeling the impact of the SEC’s ambitious agenda, NAM Managing Vice President of Tax and Domestic Economic Policy Chris Netram told lawmakers.

The proposed climate rule “would represent a costly, uncertain and ultimately infeasible standard for public issuers as well as the small and privately held businesses within their supply chains,” Netram said.
He critiqued the SEC’s efforts “to encourage and empower shareholder activists” and “dismantle” the “commonsense safeguards” adopted in 2020 to provide appropriate oversight of proxy advisory firms.
The NAM is also concerned by attempts to require “private issuers to make detailed financial information about their business publicly available,” which could cost the U.S. economy up to 100,000 jobs per year.

What can be done: The NAM is calling on the SEC to rescind or modify proposed regulations that “threaten access to capital and impose costly and unnecessary regulatory burdens on manufacturers that slow job creation and growth.”