LAS VEGAS—The mom-and-pop concession stand on a northern Iowa lake rented boats, sold snacks and beverages, stocked bait and tackle, and offered tips to visiting fisher folk about where to cast a line.
In the fall, it sold shotgun shells for the hunters who replaced the boaters and anglers during deer seasons, making it worthwhile for the concession to stay open into late November.
For that, the small business was essentially shut down without notice other than a message from its electronic transaction processor stating, “We can’t do business with you” because its corporate policy prohibits sales involving firearms or ammunition.
“Their credit card processor ‘deplatformed’ them, and that is when we stepped in,” American Free Enterprise Chamber of Commerce (AmFree) CEO Gentry Collins told The Epoch Times.
“We connected them with processors” that facilitate transactions without any ideological overlays and at a “competitive retail rate” to boot, he said.
Discrimination against the firearms industry by banks and transaction processors in denying financial services—and the emergence of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) prioritized investment policies—are “the most common ways that legal businesses are being denied access to the market,” Collins said from AmFree’s booth at the Shooting Hunting Outdoor Trade (SHOT) Show in Las Vegas.
These policies, adopted by JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, PNC, Goldman Sachs, and PayPal, among others, are examples of “woke capitalism” that seven Republican governors pledged to combat during a Jan. 19 SHOT Show forum.
“I’m not going to let some banks or processing companies discriminate in our state,” Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt said, vowing to “not allow wokeness to trample our freedoms.”
That’s easier said than done, however, when big banks, big processors, and big businesses rule the roost with few alternate financial service providers available to small and mid-sized businesses.
There’s a growing number of vendors that will provide financial services for businesses that face corporate discrimination. It’s the role of advocacy groups, such as AmFree, to promote those vendors and to lobby on their behalf.
An Organization Committed to Free Enterprise
AmFree was launched in April 2022 by “concerned people who started this as a passion project,” Collins said, including former Iowa Gov. and Ambassador to China under the Trump administration Terry Branstad, who serves as chair, and general counsel William Canfield, a six-time Republican presidential campaign general counsel.
“There is a need for a national chamber organization that was committed to the principles of free enterprise,” said Collins, a former national political director at the Republican Governors Association and the Republican National Committee. “We need a free enterprise chamber to fight against burdensome regulations, job-killing tax policies,” and progressive policies that target businesses in industries they dislike.
“There is an attempt in our economy to force culture change that can’t be won at the ballot box. That’s what we’re fighting.”
