Is the new right embracing degrowth economics?

Times

07-05-2025

There was a time, not so long ago, when the concept of 'degrowth' belonged strictly to the eco-left. A luxury ideology for environmental activists and sandal-wearing dreamers, the basic idea was that pursuing economic growth was a destructive obsession. Rising GDP didn't improve ordinary people's lives, but fuelled economic inequality and ecological ruin. Degrowthers thus wanted policymakers to deprioritise growing GDP, with the public accepting a simpler, less abundant life.
Remarkably, shades of this anti-growth creed are now creeping into the policies of the populist right. President Trump's Maga movement and Nigel Farage's Reform might loudly denounce green zealots and net-zero diktats. Yet listen closely, and you'll hear echoes of precisely the ideas they claim to despise: that restricting economic growth, or limiting people's consumption possibilities, is somehow beneficial for voters.
Trump's pivot is the most striking. Here's a man who stormed the campaign trail raging against the worst inflation since 1981, vowing to restore low prices and booming growth. Yet Trump, the living embodiment of conspicuous consumption, the candidate who ranted about environmental rules ruining showers and rendering dishwashers feeble, now sings an anti-abundance tune.
Defending his tariffs last week, Trump dismissed consumer choice and low prices as mere frivolous excess. 'I don't think that a beautiful baby girl needs — that's 11 years old — needs to have 30 dolls, I think they can have three dolls or four dolls … They don't need to have 250 pencils. They can have five,' he said. Never mind that some families can afford only one or two dolls, Trump's message was clear: Americans should meekly accept less consumption and higher prices for the greater good.
This theme of virtuous private austerity keeps resurfacing. Scott Bessent, Trump's treasury secretary, has declared that 'access to cheap goods is not the essence of the American dream.' JD Vance, the vice-president, was more direct last year, saying 'a million cheap toasters aren't worth a single American manufacturing job.' Forget affordable comforts, then — nationalist industrial ambitions demand your sacrifice. A man propelled to victory by anger over inflation now cheerfully embraces lowering supply and raising prices.
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A similar anti-growth impulse is taking root this side of the Atlantic, too. Reform UK isn't just ascendant because of governments' broken immigration promises, but because the public is fed up with the consequences of economic stagnation. Yet Reform's response, astonishingly, has been to double down on the obstructionist impulses that worsened Britain's growth problems.
Basking in last week's electoral victories, Richard Tice, a Reform MP, didn't promise his party would push Labour to relax stifling net-zero policies. Instead, he boasted that his councillors would block renewable energy projects in Lincolnshire outright. 'If you are thinking of investing in solar farms, Battery storage systems, or trying to build pylons … Think again … We will fight you every step of the way,' he vowed.
This goes beyond scepticism about green energy economics — it's outright Nimbyism to private investment. Reform's national policy reflects this agenda, too: new taxes on renewables, banning battery storage systems, and fighting above-ground electricity pylons. Each restricts supply further, raising bills for households stretched by net-zero targets.
Farage, meanwhile, has attacked Labour's housing supply goals, characterising more development as threatening Britons' quality of life. Rather than liberalising planning, he wants to reduce immigration to curb housing demand. Yet years of under-building mean we already have a housing shortfall for those here. Farage's message is degrowth to a tee: he knows better than free markets what's best for you, and it's having fewer homes.
Trump and Reform might resent the degrowth label, claiming these policies defend local jobs and communities, while they tout deregulation elsewhere. But intentions don't change outcomes. The reality is fewer goods, steeper prices, less infrastructure, and weaker growth — no matter how virtuous they spin it. One suspects that populists preaching that voters must settle for less won't stay popular for long.