This sounds like like quite an... aggressive move: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-06-25/the-government-wants-esg-out-of-pensions?sref=63ZrW3mM

I haven't been following closely the battles being waged on what US industry pension funds can invest in, and there are long-running debates over what's acceptable under "fiduciary duty" (which is not a narrow and neat concept as some like to think) but this goes a bit further...

"They can consider ESG factors “only if they present economic risks or opportunities that qualified investment professionals would treat as material economic considerations under generally accepted investment theories”;"

What's "generally accepted investment theories"? As I tweeted about a week ago, virtually everyone now accepts that climate change is a financial factor. CEOs of big American banks & asset owners talk about it. It's in the Bank of England's financial stability mandate. Etc.

And it's not just rhetorical or high level; there's so much work linking climate & other factors into things like: "benchmarks, expense ratios, fund size, long-term investment returns, volatility measures, investment manager tenure, and mix of asset types".

However, lots of people are also attached to certain narrow ideas about fiduciary duty. And Lisa Woll of US SIF says: "Generating more hurdles to the incorporation of ESG criteria will have a chilling effect" https://www.responsible-investor.com/articles/us-industry-groups-respond-to-government-proposals-to-limit-esg

So these rules might not even be implemented as proposed, but the *idea* of the rules might be more impactful than the detail. Creating exhausting, detailed barriers can be pretty effective.