Per the U.S. Chamber’s recently released State of American Business, the worker shortage trend is getting worse, with 10.5 million unfilled jobs. For every 100 U.S. job openings there are only 73 available workers. Manufacturing has been a stable economic factor for decades but with the growing skills gap and workforce shortages, innovation is key to sustainability.

Montana Chamber and the Montana Manufacturing Association are bringing together manufacturing leaders, executives, and employees alongside business associations and local chamber members and legislators for Manufacturing & International Trade Day, on March 16, in Helena, 10 am – 7 pm / $75 per person (includes reception

The event features solution-oriented seminars and keynotes from leading industry experts along with a Trade Show.

Registration information is available on the Montana Chamber website.

By Chris Woodward, The Center Square

Montana will no longer allow state funds to go towards environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing.

Joining the Montana Board of Investments in his announcement, Gov. Greg Gianforte said recently his administration is committed to getting returns on $26 billion in investments of the state’s financial assets, but it “will not advance a political agenda.”

“As the State of Montana invests its financial assets, our priority is and should always be maximizing returns for our shareholders – the people of Montana,” the governor said in a press release. “On my watch, we won’t undermine taxpayers’ returns on investment in favor of the trend of activist, woke capitalism through ESG investing.”

ESG is defined by Investopedia as a set of standards that socially conscious voters use to screen investments. Critics say investment firms are using “activist” ESG policies regardless of what investors want. 

Stephen Soukup, who’s head of the investment consulting group The Political Forum, applauded Gianforte and the board’s move, saying ESG is a “top-down, anti-democratic, and coercive investment technique that takes power out of the hands of the people’s representatives and hands it to large, centralized multinational asset management firms who should be investing on behalf of their clients’ best pecuniary interests.”

“I think that state executives, treasurers, comptrollers, and pension boards should most definitely be willing to take back control of pension investment decisions from large Wall Street firms,” Soukup told The Center Square.  “The top-down, one-size-fits-all approach of the big firms misses and ignores state and local needs, beliefs, and investment goals and is, therefore, an unfit solution.” 

Soukup, whose books include ‘The Dictatorship of Woke Capital” and the upcoming “Other People’s Money,” thinks there is a lesson here for elected officials across the nation.  

“Governor Gianforte and the Montana Board of Investments are exercising their responsibilities as fiduciaries of the people of Montana,” Soukup said. “More politicians – right, left, and in between – should follow their lead and put the community interests of their constituents ahead of the ideological predispositions of the Wall Street mega-firms.”

By Cameron Arcand, The Center Square

The United States Customs and Border Protection is asking Americans to stop trying to smuggle in raw eggs from Mexico. 

As avian flu is causing the price of eggs and poultry to rise, along with the current inflation rate, people are purchasing the products in Mexico instead of shelling out the extra cash at the grocery store.

“There has been a large increase in the volume of prohibited food items, such as raw eggs and raw poultry meat, brought by travelers from Mexico. We would like to remind the traveling public that federal agricultural regulations remain in effect,” Jennifer De La O, CBP Director of Field Operations in San Diego, said in a news release on Jan 20. 

In a separate tweet, De La O said that people could face up to a $10,000 fine if they take a crack at illegally smuggling the items. 

The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that over 57 million birds have died from the illness, according to the news release. 

As of December, egg prices have increased 60% in the U.S. compared to December 2021, the Consumer Price Index determined. 

Confiscations have reportedly increased by 300% since last month, according to KENS 5. 

By Bethany Blankley, The Center Square

Twenty-five attorneys general and several other plaintiffs have sued the Biden administration asking the court to halt a federal ESG policy that could negatively impact the retirement savings of 152 million Americans. Montana is one of those states.

The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court Northern District Amarillo Division naming Secretary of Labor Martin Walsh and the U.S. Department of Labor as defendants.

It alleges the U.S. Department of Labor created a rule prioritizing “woke” Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) investing that jeopardizes the retirement savings of 152 million workers, or two-thirds of the U.S. population.

Last November, the Department of Labor finalized a rule allowing companies to prioritize ESG policies when choosing retirement plans. It was the last phase of a nearly two-year effort to reverse a Trump-era rule banning the practice.

The department said it was implementing the rule to “remove barriers to plan fiduciaries’ ability to consider climate change and other environmental, social and governance factors when they select investments and exercise shareholder rights.”

In response, Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar said President Joe Biden was “using unelected bureaucrats … to push his radical ESG agenda, undermine the Texas economy and jeopardize our national security and energy independence.

“Even as free market forces begin to erode the ESG fairy tale and expose the intellectual dishonesty and utter lack of transparency in this investment scam, President Biden is using the DOL rulemaking process to double down on policies that put his social agenda above the retirement needs of hard-working Americans.”

Less than two months later, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued, along with 24 other attorneys general.

“Beyond being detrimental to the retirement accounts of hardworking Americans, the rule is fundamentally unlawful, as well as arbitrary and capricious,”  Paxton said, noting that it violates the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), created to protect retirement assets, and the Administrative Procedure Act.

“This rule is an affront to every American concerned about their retirement account,” Paxton said. “The fact that the Biden Administration is now opting to risk the financial security of working-class Americans to advance a woke political agenda is insulting and illegal. For generations, federal law has required that fiduciaries place their clients’ financial interests at the forefront, and I intend to fight the Biden Administration in court to ensure that they cannot put hard-working Americans’ retirement savings at risk.”

The rule, “Prudence and Loyalty in Selecting Plan Investments and Exercising Shareholder Rights,” follows an executive order Biden issued last May. His order directed the federal government to implement policies “to help safeguard the financial security of America’s families, businesses and workers from climate-related financial risk that may threaten the life savings and pensions of U.S. workers and families.”

The rule change “will bolster the resilience of workers’ retirement savings and pensions by removing the artificial impediments – and chilling effect on environmental, social and governance investments – caused by the prior administration’s rules,” Acting Assistant Secretary for the Employee Benefits Security Administration Ali Khawar said in a statement last fall. “A principal idea underlying the proposal is that climate change and other ESG factors can be financially material and when they are, considering them will inevitably lead to better long-term risk-adjusted returns, protecting the retirement savings of America’s workers.”

November’s notice followed a March 2021 and October 2021 announcement and included comments received from the public.

Last August, Hegar directed state agencies to divest from 350 individual investment funds and 10 financial companies that were prioritizing ESG, and particularly boycotting oil and natural gas companies, as part of their portfolio. Not long after, Gov. Greg Abbott told The Center Square that the directive was working. He said some of the companies on Texas’ list were making an effort to get off of it.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has also taken action, including prohibiting the state’s retirement fund from investing in funds that prioritize ESG.

Samuel Stebbins,  24/7 Wall St. for Center Square

Public employee pension systems are some of the largest financial liabilities on state government balance sheets. The 50 states have over $4.5 trillion in cumulative pension liabilities combined, roughly double the amount all 50 states spent in fiscal 2020. For years, state pension systems were woefully underfunded in much of the country, but according to a recent report from the Pew Charitable Trusts, this trend may be reversing.

Driven by higher investment from both employees and employers, state pension systems have largely stabilized as of 2020. Since 2007, states across the country have more than doubled annual pension contributions, often cutting funding for other programs to do so.

Still, some states are better positioned to pay public sector employees in retirement than others. In Montana, pension liabilities totaled an estimated $17.5 billion in 2020. Meanwhile, the state’s pension assets totaled $11.8 billion. Considering both assets and liabilities, Montana’s pension funding ratio is 67.3%, the 20th lowest in the country.

According to 2021 estimates from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Montana state government employs some 27,800 people, or 5.6% of the total private and public sector workforce in the state.

It is important to note that 2020 is the most recent year for which comprehensive state level data is available and that the recent market downturn has all but erased much of the financial gains states have made in recent years. Still, while markets are always susceptible to turmoil, improved policies have gone a long way to improving pension funding in much of the country.

All state pension data in this story was compiled by the Pew Charitable Trusts using comprehensive annual financial reports from each state.