Have President Biden’s “woke” economic policies served to fuel the current inflationary economy? That’s the question posed by veteran Wall Street reporter Charles Gasparino in his new book on woke capitalism, “Go Woke, Go Broke.”

Mr. Gasparino focuses on the impact of woke economic policy — meaning, regulation guided by specific environmental, social, governance requirements — on the energy sector during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2021. 

Environmental, Social, and Governance regulations, he argues, serves to distort the efficiencies of the market by imposing unnatural business incentives. In the case of the energy sector, Mr. Gasparino writes, the Biden administration’s ESG regulations forced oil companies to focus on renewable energy alternatives, rather than serving their shareholders. 

“ESG’s imperatives gave energy companies the economic incentive — that is, more people buying their stock — to stop drilling oil.” 

The result? Higher gas prices. Just as Russia invaded Ukraine and upended the global oil market.

While most Americans suffered at the hand of cripplingly-high prices, Wall Street, which had been steadily ramping up investment in ESG, making it one of the largest sectors in the American economy, was raking in cash. 

“If you limit the supply of energy and incentivize companies to focus on something else when energy, and low prices for energy, are needed,” Mr. Gasparino tells the Sun, “you’re going to have backlash.” 

Granted, he says, ESG can’t be held solely responsible for the current inflationary environment. “But throw ESG on top of everything else, and you have a problem.” 

Mr. Gasparino’s criticism of Mr. Biden’s political wokeness goes beyond the president’s ESG-riddled economic policies. 

One of the president’s “greatest disservices” to the American people, he argues, is his championing of diversity, equity, and inclusion — beginning when he first ran for president and announced his intention to select a woman of color as his running mate. 

“He was just downgrading her skills. It was outrageously stupid,” Mr. Gasparino tells the Sun. Same goes for his pledge to appoint a Black woman to the Supreme Court, he says. 

He takes his criticisms a step further in his book, in which he claims that Mr. Biden “might just be the most DEI-obsessed president in the nation’s history in terms of its enforcing racial and gender diversity mandates in government, and threatening to impose those on the private sector.”

“It’s no coincidence,” he writes, “that the rise of corporate progressivism and its various permutations like DEI reached a fever pitch during the Biden presidency.”

While Mr. Gasparino says he’s unsure of whether Mrs. Harris will follow the 46th president in “going woke on every aspect,” he has “no doubt” that wokeness will be a major player in the coming election. 

“Every issue already has a DEI component,” he tells the Sun. “You can already see the way it’s playing out,” he says, referencing the backlash against the selection of several “what — 5-foot-3” female Secret Service officers who rushed to guard President Trump following his assassination attempt. 

Though at the end of the day, “wokeness is something that American people generally hate,” Mr. Gasparino assures.