Will Trump's Tariffs Fuel or Foil the Degrowth Movement?

As Trump’s tariffs kick in, the Republican party is suddenly spouting anti-consumerist rhetoric that would make the Lorax smile. Should we cheer on this accidental experiment in economic shrinkage, or will this ham-fisted set of trade policies cause a backlash against the proponents of degrowth? As political confusion reigns, we offer eco-localism as the no-regrets way to build community resilience in the face of unprecedented ineptitude that probably won’t go away anytime soon. Originally recorded on 6/16/25.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, Abundance, Avid Reader Press, March 2025.
• UN Alliance For Sustainable Fashion addresses the damage of ‘fast fashion’
• Kelsey Piper, "Trump’s bizarre new push to make us poorer," Vox, February 7, 2025.
• Kenneth Pucker, "Lessons From Trump’s Degrowth Experiment," Business of Fashion, May 9, 2025.
• Kenneth Bradsher, "China’s Chokehold on This Obscure Mineral Threatens the West’s Militaries," New York Times, June 9, 2025.
• Adam Tooze, "Trump's futurism: Elon's rockets and fewer dolls for "baby girl," Chartbook, May 6, 2025.
• "The End of Fast Fashion?," The Daily, May 15, 2025.
• Kurt Cobb, "Trade war vise grip: China is squeezing rare earth supply and it’s hurting," Resilience, June 8, 2025.
• "Derek Thompson: Trump's War on Dolls," The Bulwark, May 2, 2025.
• Richard Heinberg, "How Eco-Localism Differs from Tariff Terrorism," Resilience, April 17, 2025.

Related episode(s) of Crazy Town:

• Episode 86, "Escaping Growthism"
• Episode 94, “Breaking News: Crazy Town joins the newly formed Department of Entropy”

Transcript

Jason Bradford  
Hi, I'm Jason Bradford.

Asher Miller  
I'm Asher Miller,

Rob Dietz  
And I'm Rob Dietz. Welcome to Crazy Town, where the hottest toy on the market is a life-like plastic baby, just in time, as plastic pollution is sending sperm counts to zero.

Jason Bradford  
In today's episode, we're finding some reasons to laugh about the political turmoil brought on by Trump's tariffs. Has the right wing embraced degrowth and environmental health? Has the left wing embraced hyperactive trade and neoliberal economics? Is the right wing the new left wing? Have we found ourselves in the upside down world from Stranger Things? Not exactly. Everything is not as it seems. And as usual, there is nuance afoot. Join us as we dig into what an environmentally sound economy looks like, and how you can be part of an economy that provides well being for all. Rob, I know your teeny brain may be limited to 80s movies, but I'm wondering, did you ever see that Mel Brooks film from 1967, "The Producers?"

Rob Dietz  
Well, I'm looking at the outline here for this episode, and it says, "Say something stupid like usual, Rob."

Jason Bradford  
This is a fourth wall moment. Don't do this.

Rob Dietz  
Sorry. I think I can really come through this time though. So first of all, my teeny brain is not limited to 80s movies. It's limited to movies that are within my living memory. Okay, so from about, let's say 1978 onward. 

Asher Miller  
In '67 you were --

Rob Dietz  
 Not even a glint in the parents eyes at that point. But I do remember that in the year 2005 there was a remake of the producers with Matthew Broderick, Nathan Lane, Will Ferrell and Uma Thurman. 

Jason Bradford  
Wow. 

Asher Miller  
Did you see it?

Rob Dietz  
 No. I thought of it because it's almost a remake of "The Lion King." You've got Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane. That's like Simba and Timon, or Pumba.

Jason Bradford  
You're getting off topic.

Rob Dietz  
You told me to say something stupid.

Jason Bradford  
Okay, you came through. Asher, help me out.

Asher Miller  
So producers, Mel Brooks - 

Jason Bradford  
Yeah, classic.

Asher Miller  
One of my favorites. Some of our longtime listeners may have heard me talk about my favorite scene in film history was from a Mel Brooks film. So Mel Brooks, we had Gene Wilder in that. Basically, it's about these Grifters who accidentally make a Broadway musical hit. But what they're actually trying to do was to make a flop. Right?  Right.  So I'm gonna play you a clip, Rob. Maybe this will give you a little bit of an explanation: 

The Producers  
"Well, that's where you made your mistake. You didn't go all the way. You see, if you were really a bald criminal, you could have raised a million."  "But the play cost me only $60,000 to produce."  "And how long did it run?"  "One night."  "You see? Do you see what I'm trying to tell you? You could have raised a million dollars, put on a $60,000 flop and kept the rest."  "But what if the play was a hit?"  "Well, then you'd go to jail."

Asher Miller  
So, I mean a million dollars you gotta round up for inflation. Now we're talking about, like, you know, $150 billion, right? 

Jason Bradford  
Sure. 

Asher Miller  
I mean, that's the ballpark people are playing with these days when they're trying to con people. 

Jason Bradford  
Yes.

Rob Dietz  
Now far be it from me to try to squash a conversation about a movie,but what the hell does this have to do with anything?

Jason Bradford  
Well, this movie came into my head when you guys and I were talking about the tariffs going in and the potential for consumerism to take a hit. Now, this may not have been the plan, right? Like, I don't think Trump was running on, like, I'm going to make your life easier, you know, I'm going to lower prices for everything. And then he gets in and in some ham fisted way starts like jacking up trade barriers, and it's ridiculous. But in the end, I wonder, you know, I wonder. . . Is something good coming out of this? Like in the producers, the musical hit of that show, the great opening scene was "Springtime for Hitler and Germany." And they're goose stepping on the stage and stuff like that. 

Asher Miller  
Only a Jew could make that though. 

Jason Bradford  
And the audience ended up laughing at it instead of running out of the theater eventually. So is this what's happening? Are we getting a fantastic song and dance routine?

Asher Miller  
Who is laughing right now? I don't think anyone right, left ,or center is laughing at this performance. 

Jason Bradford  
Well some of us are like, you know, do we need all the junk coming from China?

Rob Dietz  
It does feel like the three of us picked up on that a little bit, right. We were sort of like, "Oh, could this be Trump is an anti-consumerist."

Donald Trump  
Much of it we don't need, you know? Somebody said, Oh, the shelves are going to be open. Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, you know. And maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally.

Asher Miller  
It's true. You know, Trump's stand now is just full of hippie tree huggers, right? I mean, listen to Trump, right? This is what he said. Should I do a Trump? "Much of it we don't need." I sound like Bernie Sanders not Donald Trump.

Speaker 1  
I was like, of course. That's great, no problem. I don't care about dolls.

Asher Miller  
That's because you had boys. 

Jason Bradford  
That's true.

Asher Miller  
Now, if they were like, toy guns, you would have been all up in arms. 

Jason Bradford  
Exactly. 

Asher Miller  
No pun intended. 

Jason Bradford  
Yeah.

Rob Dietz  
Probably the the weird thing that's happening in the political world is that you've got Democrat pundits, you know, people who you would say are, you know, maybe moderate folks like Derek Thompson. He's a writer for The Atlantic, and he's a co-author of the book "Abundance,"which we've talked about.

Asher Miller  
We reviewed glowingly.

Rob Dietz  
But in a recent podcast episode from that show, "The Bulwark," he's defending the consumer economy. He does not like these tariffs. He says China makes a lot of stuff for really cheap prices that we all want to consume, the world needs more cement, the world needs more steel. If the U.S. doesn't buy from China, then someone else is going to buy.

Jason Bradford  
Yeah, why not us take it?

Asher Miller  
Somebody has gotta to buy all those, plastic dolls.

Rob Dietz  
 I mean, he basically wants, yeah, we should have manufacturing here at home, but we should also have a flood, a tsunami, of cheap stuff coming in.

Jason Bradford  
So this is what I want to discuss today. This is sort of the classic Crazy Town situation unfolding where we kind of find ourselves going, yay Trump. Nice job. When I think it's sort of an accident.

Rob Dietz  
I'm pretty sure I didn't say yay Trump. 

Jason Bradford  
I mean, given that he ran on the affordability crisis, I think there's a lot of -

Asher Miller  
Well, he's talking about lowering prices. I mean, that was his thing, right?

Jason Bradford  
Yeah. So he accidentally got into this situation, and now they've got to post hoc rationalize. And the Republicans are falling in line, saying, "Yeah, yeah. We're about the value. We're value people. We care about making stuff that's higher quality and it's a magnificent thing to behold."

Asher Miller  
Yeah, I think JD Vance was like, "A million toasters isn't worth one job in America manufacturing.

Jason Bradford  
Exactly. Crazy. He was just saying crazy stuff. So, I love it.

Asher Miller  
We did talk about this a little bit, actually, I think before Trump even came into office. It was after the election. We did an episode called "Breaking news! Crazy Town joins the newly formed department of entropy." And in that we talked about "The Upside of Down" from Thomas Homer Dixon Tad, not from Stranger Things. It's just the idea that are there some positive things that might come out of the chaos or cruelty or whatever from the Trump administration that are aligned with our views of what's required, you know? And we talked about that, I think, a little bit with RFK Jr. A lot of problematic things, but you know, if he's going after pesticides, maybe that's not a bad thing, right? So, yeah, we talked about that a little bit even before he came into office.

Rob Dietz  
Yeah, there's some possibility that some good things will flow, but we're not sure for how long. So I suggest we unpack this a little bit, rather than looking at, say, tariffs in general, or the whole political turmoil situation. Let's look at a particular industry. Okay? Let's look at my favorite industry, the fashion industry.

Jason Bradford  
Oh yeah, you look wonderful today.

Asher Miller  
When I look at you, fashionista. 

Rob Dietz  
Yeah. I think this t-shirt I'm wearing, I've had for at least 15 years and bought it at a thrift store. So yeah . . .

Asher Miller  
Well, I mean, it's come in and out of fashion like five times in that 15 years.

Rob Dietz  
It was actually made before you could make shirts out of plastic.

Asher Miller  
Oh. Well that's really old school. Rob, you're not doing your part for the environment.

Rob Dietz  
Yeah. Well, as you guys know here in the age of internet shopping combined with the age of synthetic fibers and polyester, combined with the age of cargo ships crisscrossing the oceans with untold numbers of garments, we've seen the rise of these companies like Zara and Shein. I don't know if I'm pronouncing those correctly, but they've made all this kind of like fast fashion, right, where people can buy zillions of pieces of semi-disposable clothing. But the issue is, with the tariffs coming in, prices have started rising. And some people are saying, "Wow, I used to be able to buy this disposable piece of crap for $4 and now it's three times. It cost me $12."

Jason Bradford  
People would do like, I'm gonna wear this at a party once, right, and then I can throw it away. I mean just amazing stuff.

Asher Miller  
So let me get this straight, and I'm going to sound like a dick here, but just so I understand there are now implications and people might be changing their consumer behavior because prices have gone up rather than maybe realizing the impacts of fast fashion, right? So if you think about some of the impacts of fast fashion, according to the UN environmental program, the fashion industry is Earth's second largest water consumer, second only to agriculture.

Rob Dietz  
I can't wait till it tops agriculture so that we're spending more on fast fashion.

Asher Miller  
In an episode many, many moons ago, we talked about economists, our favorite trade, our favorite profession. We're talking about this Nobel Prize winning economist basically saying it's fine if we lose half of agriculture production, right? It's only like 6% of GDP or 3% GDP. So yeah, we'll get rid of agriculture. Fast fashion is much more important to the economy. They could use up more water.

Jason Bradford  
They just need to make edible clothing,

Asher Miller  
Right. Well, speaking of which. Okay, so 2017 report from the International Union for Conservation of Nature estimated that 35% of all microplastics, that's the tiny pieces of non biodegradable plastic found in the ocean, come from laundering, just washing synthetic textiles like polyester, which are now like -- This plastic stuff is in people's cotton clothing. These blends are in everything.

Rob Dietz  
It's in my brain. 

Asher Miller  
It is. That's the thing. We're talking about we're ingesting, we are ingesting it.

Jason Bradford  
We're breathing it even. It's in the air.

Asher Miller  
It's lovely. It's become part of us.

Jason Bradford  
It's become the rainbows.

Rob Dietz  
Save this. We're gonna have this in an upcoming episode.Talk about a Crazy Town topic.

Asher Miller  
And it's not just environmental impacts. There's a lot of environmental impacts. There's also huge economic impacts. I mean, a lot of these clothes are made and they're actually disaggregated, so they're transported all over the place and built in segments or whatever. But there are a lot of issues with workplace abuse. A lot of times it's women that working in these factories, not getting paid fair wages. Meanwhile, the founder of Zara, which I think didn't start that long ago, is one of the 20 richest people in the world. He's worth more than $100 billion. But those things are not important. What's important is that the price has gone up three times on this fast fashion.

Rob Dietz  
That's exactly right. 

Jason Bradford  
The New York Times podcast, "The Daily" has a few more listeners than ours, but they -- 

Asher Miller  
Like three or four. 

Jason Bradford  
A handful. 

Asher Miller  
Yeah, that's what few means. 

Jason Bradford  
They had an episode about this. And the woman who was the host, her daughter, she's talking about how her daughter is always buying this stuff and getting on Tiktok. And now what's interesting, as soon as the prices are going up like crazy, they're noticing on Tiktok, her daughter is talking about it. And now there's this anti-consumer trend on Tiktokapparently forming. And some of the commenters, I was reading the comments of "The Daily." Some of the commenters were like you needed to lead with this, the fact that right this is happening. They kind of put it at the end like what's going to happen with kids not be able to buy things for $2 you know, new shirts. But the other thing that they debated on the comments was, should we be celebrating this or not? Should we be celebrating what we're what we're dealing with? Is it okay to celebrate this?

Rob Dietz  
Yeah. Well, weighing in further on the meaning of, say, you know, rising prices in the fashion industry and lowering consumption of all this stuff, Jason, you shared with me your favorite periodical business of fashion.

Asher Miller  
You get that mailed to you? 

Jason Bradford  
Oh yeah. I got a hard copy on my bedstand.

Rob Dietz  
Yeah, the cover is made of polyester.

Asher Miller  
I was gonna say. The backside is denim.

Rob Dietz  
A writer named Kenneth Pucker has an article in there and I'm going to give you a quote from it. He said, "In the space of the last month, America's Climate denying President may have achieved what a decade of sustainable fashion campaigning has not. Trump's tariffs have slammed the brakes on a culture of environmentally destructive excessive consumption long fueled by the flow of cheap goods from China." Very well said, very well written, and kind of a woah moment of like, yeah some dopey not meaning to producers moment from Trump has kind of like fixed a problem that enviros have been shouting for. But then this guy, Kenneth Pucker goes on to say also, "At first blush, the pending consumption contraction could be seen as an experiment in de-growth." Which, you know, that's the kind of economic policy we've been talking about. We need to get off of this infinite growth path and kind of contract and converge to a steady state economy.

Asher Miller  
I think we're seeing a lot of this intentional degrowth happening from Trump in other sectors of the economy as well. 

Jason Bradford  
Intentional? 

Asher Miller  
Yeah, intentional. 

Jason Bradford  
Okay, okay.

Asher Miller  
You know, he's going after the big ones. The ones that you know he really sees as problematic, like the military. The U.S. military. You know?So if you don't care about fashion - 

Jason Bradford  
I don't.I don't. 

Asher Miller  
Unlike Rob.

Rob Dietz  
I'm gonna be the new fashion reporter.

Asher Miller  
I can't even look at you when we're trying to pretend we're serious.

Jason Bradford  
Very bespoke clothing.

Rob Dietz  
I'm so glad this is not a video episode.

Asher Miller  
The socks and the shirt. The work really well together.

Rob Dietz  
You're lucky I'm wearing a shirt today. 

Asher Miller  
That's true. So, yeah. Just give it 10 years. So, you know, if you don't care about fashion, you know, there's big impacts of all this trade policy, tariffs and everything on other things like rare earth elements. You know, rare earth elements are important to folks who believe in climate change and want to see an energy transition happen because they go into things like electric vehicles and wind and solar. But they're also used for defense. You know? There there's certain rare earth elements say you can only get from China. And they're key for like, military airplanes, for example, you know. So I think that that was what Trump was after this whole time. And also, you know, reducing car production.

Rob Dietz  
So you're saying that Trump's parade in DC was the last military adventure we're gonna have in this country.

Asher Miller  
Exactly.

Jason Bradford  
Well, yeah. I mean, I saw the US. car manufacturer thinking we've got to go to China because China's not exporting this stuff. We need to build stuff in the U.S. Just crazy.

Rob Dietz  
So we build the car in China. 

Jason Bradford  
The components and then ship them. Yeah, yeah. 

Asher Miller  
I get what's happening here. He's trying to bring all of manufacturing back to China. Okay, I get it. I understand that.

Jason Bradford  
While sweeping changes in American society are upon us, traditional woke schooling systems are slow to develop curricula in the career most likely to be in high demand for your youngster, thuggery. Economic forecasts showing a severe shortage of thugs in the educational pipeline, present an opportunity for responsive parents to give their kids an edge via non institutional outlets. This summer, send your children to Bibles Jack Boots and Bullets, a Christian youth camp for thuggery. Make sure your kid is on the leading edge of a growing industry, giving them access to the tools to become a self righteous sociopath. With a number of practical camp activities such as small animal torture, choke holds, 101 intimidation through goose stepping. The finer points, converting football stadiums to processing centers, the Argentine experience, and lessons from legendary dungeon masters of the Spanish Inquisition. In addition to practical skill building, nightly philosophy discussions around cross burning campfires will include, What's there to confess: the relevance of penance in God's army, God wants us to smite: The biblical case for thuggery, and is sperm banking a moral imperative for incel procreation. Bibles Jack Boots and Bullets, a Christian youth camp for thuggery. Making your young thug as comfortable with Ezekiel as they will be with zip ties.  So guys, are Trump's tariffs, is this trade war breakdown of globalization situation, is this really de-growth? I mean, is Trump our guy? Is he our King? Is he our Savior?

Asher Miller  
We just did this whole no kings thing in this country. Dd you see that?

Jason Bradford  
So maybe not. 

Asher Miller  
Well, according to Kelsey Piper at Vox, Trump's tariff policies are very much de-growth.

Jason Bradford  
Okay, okay. I'm liking.

Rob Dietz  
So we've got experts telling us the answer is yes.

Asher Miller  
Yes. So back in February 2025, she wrote quote, "I think we are witnessing the birth of right wing de-growth which is all the same flaws as left wing degrowth, but potentially with much more political power."

Jason Bradford  
Oh God. 

Asher Miller  
So as you can tell, Piper, she's not a big fan of de-growth. Her two main reasons apparently are that, one, "many countries have successfully cracked the code to increasing prosperity without increasing carbon emissions." This is according to her. "And continuing down the path."  That pathway seems promising. That's a quote. And the second one, also quote is, "The second is that we live in a democracy and it's hard to find anything that pulls as badly as trying to shrink the economy," unquote. So too bad the first of those is factually questionable and the second one is totally irrelevant.

Rob Dietz  
I got all kinds of issues as you might expect. First of all, can we just say that if so many countries have successfully cracked the code of of how to grow the economy infinitely without any problem, then why aren't we seeing that?

Jason Bradford  
Yeah, the CO2 levels, I think, are at a record high now.

Asher Miller  
So apparently, our friend Jason Hickel and some other folks had done, they published a paper a couple of years ago I think it was, looking at this question of decoupling. This is something that people talk about, right? They talk about decoupling economic growth from greenhouse gas emissions or other environmental impacts.

Jason Bradford  
I call it the breatharianism. 

Rob Dietz  
Yeah, I always think of it as magical thinking. 

Jason Bradford  
It's industrial breatharian.

Asher Miller  
Now they say that there are, just for our new listeners, maybe not quite as, you know, deeply steeped in this stuff as we are. Let me just explain. Listen to the previous six years of our show.  So there's relative decoupling and there's absolute decoupling, right? And what they talk about is -

Jason Bradford  
And then there's the friends you choose. 

Asher Miller  
Right. Then there's all kinds of like, you know, people being in polyamorous relationships. 

Rob Dietz  
There's cousin decoupling, there's . . . 

Asher Miller  
So they did point to about a dozen countries, you know, highly quote, unquote, "developed industrialized nations" that had gone through kind of absolute decoupling, in the sense that they've been on this track of, you know, continued decline in their greenhouse gas emissions from their economic activity, right? But we're not seeing this globally. A lot of this, of course, comes from offshoring of things.

Rob Dietz  
Yeah, meaning you're consuming goods that are manufactured in China or in India or Vietnam or whater. 

Jason Bradford  
Because you have a banking industry or something like that, right? You're doing something else.

Rob Dietz  
Like growth in the U.S. economy, you know, the sports gambling industry is booming, but it doesn't have very big carbon emissions.

Asher Miller  
Now, they also point out that the rate of decline of that decoupling that's happening is so slow that to reach like the goals that were set at the Paris Accords a number of years ago --

Jason Bradford  
I think the sun will explode. 

Asher Miller  
It was not quite that far, but getting there. That was, you know, a number of years ago all these countries got together and they basically made commitments, right, to lower their emissions. Of course, there were voluntary emissions and there were targets. But to even meet those, it would take some 220 years.

Jason Bradford  
And of course, that low hanging fruit gets decoupled first.

Asher Miller  
Of course. 

Rob Dietz  
Well and can we also just note that people like Kelsey Piper writing in Vox, they always just talk about carbon emissions. There's other problems with all of this, you know, economic activity. You know, it's not like we've decoupled habitat loss.

Asher Miller  
And she also, this is a key thing, she uses the word prosperity, right? She's not talking about growth or, you know, economic activity. You're making the assumption that people are more prosperous based upon just looking at overall economic activity. And that is not necessarily true at all either. Right? So are people's quality of life improved or not in this scenario?

Rob Dietz  
And she may be right that a shrinking economy polls pretty badly, but I don't think it pulls anywhere near as badly as civilizational collapse and the end of humanity as we know it.

Asher Miller  
Well you can't conduct polls in that case, Rob. There are no polls. I mean, she is right because we, I mean, we just talked about this. There's lots of evidence for the environmental and social impacts of fast fashion. But that's not what has caused people to change their behavior. It's the price going up because of these trade policies, right?

Jason Bradford  
So I'm starting to realize, and this is very hard, this is hard to accept, but there's a fundamental difference between this unintended shrinking of an economy that King Trump is involved in, an economy that's purpose built for growth is what we have, and economy that we redesign to be more egalitarian in the way it contracts, you know, to contract down to a sustainable scale. What Trump is doing is therefore not what anyone who's gone through the theory and policy suggestions of de-growth would ever suggest doing. And this is sad.

Rob Dietz  
Yeah, I would agree with you. But we don't need me to agree. I want to go back to that guy from the business fashion magazine.

Jason Bradford  
That's where I get most of my good --

Asher Miller  
Your economic outlook. 

Jason Bradford  
Yeah.

Rob Dietz  
So that guy, Kenneth Parker, he nailed it. So I'm going to give you guys another quote. He said that, "Tariff induced price increases will indeed lead to less consumption, less growth, and as a result, less environmental damage. But this will not be a planned reduction focused on specific polluting sectors, and there will be no matching investments in public services, cleaner energy, or development efforts, which is what de-growth proponents like Jason Hickel," who you brought up Asher. It's what guys like Jason, not you, Jason, Jason Hickel.

Jason Bradford  
No, I have nothing to do with this. 

Rob Dietz  
"Argue that's the pathway to a cleaner, fairer in a happier society. So I've decided I like this guy Kenneth Pucker. I want to write with him over at the business of fashion. 

Jason Bradford  
Yeah, good luck with that.

Asher Miller  
I mean, you've been working up to this your whole life. 

Rob Dietz  
Would you guys be references for me if I submit a letter of interest.

Asher Miller  
I think we just need to take some photos of you.

Jason Bradford  
I can get a portfolio together with you, sure. I gotta work on the lighting.

Rob Dietz  
I have to put a shirt on now.

Asher Miller  
I mean, that's the thing. This is why it's absurd to say what Trump is doing is de-growth, right? Because there is policy that he's enacting. It's quite remarkable to see how much power a single individual has to affect the entire global economy and the fate of billions of people. This is having ripple effects across the world and there are real material impacts of people, especially those who their job is directly related to making something that gets traded in the open market.

Jason Bradford  
Not to mention -- I mean also just think about the with the USA ID stuff and the loss of medications, hundreds of thousands of people are dying because of this. This is absolutely obscene.

Asher Miller  
So there is a policy that's happening here. It seems like quite an ad hoc policy because it keeps going back and forth, changing the numbers. He probably just doesn't remember what numbers they were. It's kind of indiscriminate. It seems a bit like what mood he's in that day.

Rob Dietz  
Yeah by the time this episode comes out, we might have negative tariffs.

Asher Miller  
Exactly. And let's also keep in mind, right, de-growth is not just anadvocacy for a shrinking economy, it's a set of policies that people are putting forward that takes care of people in the process. Think about what Trump is doing in addition to these trade policies, right? He's deregulating everything. He's gutting the Environmental Protection Agency. He's trying to ramp up oil and gas production. He's trying to save the coal industry. He's opening wildlife areas to drilling. He's giving massive tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans. It doesn't sound remotely consistent with what degrowthers have been calling --

Rob Dietz  
He's trying to degrow Medicaid as well. I think he's got a a misconceptions.  

Jason Bradford  
Now, there's something interesting going on that was pointed out by historian Adam Tooze on his blog. And what I find interesting, though, is that in this post hoc rationalization that the Trump World is engaged in, they're saying stuff like, you know, you don't need that many dolls. Like, they're sort of having this anti-consumer pro, kind of, American manufacturing, pro-quality. You know, quality is more important than quantity. It's almost like a call for sacrifice for higher values. And you know, what is going on? I think it's this post hoc rationalization. But is it also, you know, it's a way to make people okay with the pain of their policies that will inflict, which, of course, seem designed to make the rich richer. You just wonder how much of those motivations matter.

Asher Miller  
What I would say that is potentially powerful for some people is that there's an actual narrative here. There's a vision for the future, right, which is making America great again. That future, in many cases, happens to be some kind of romantic view of the past for a certain population of people, right? But it's trying to put forward a vision of something. And it's saying, like, yes, we all have to kind of sacrifice to achieve this but things will be better later down the road. Rather than saying, no, no, everybody should have a doll right now. The economic system that Biden left us was perfect, right? Why are we messing with this? And it is critiquing the neoliberal consensus, which is failing for a lot of people. So I think it's hitting some people as like a real and true thing to like be against.

Rob Dietz  
Well you knowwhat's weird for me is I try to avoid hearing things that Trump says. They sort of drive me nuts. But you know that dolls quote about, you know, we don't need that many dolls. That made the rounds. And  when I saw it I was like that's the first kind of like semi-intelligent, articulate thing the man has said in the, you know, several decades.

Asher Miller  
It was pretty amazing. People don't need 30 dolls. That's kind of like a pretty simple statement on the face but it was like outrage.

Rob Dietz  
But can I just say, okay, he says something kind of useful. Maybe you have two dolls instead of 30, and maybe they cost a little more. That doesn't mean that he's for de-growth or that we should cast his chaotic tariff stuff as degrowth. And the three of us, I don't know that we've ever done this on air, but I feel like we've kind of said sort of like what I was just saying, well that makes sense. You know, maybe this is one of those upside of down moments where, you know, whatever he producers his way into something that works. But I have some real fear. And when I was thinking about this, I was thinking about the policy that the state of Oregon tried with decriminalizing drugs. And so the basics of what happened is that the people in power, the politicians and the public, they wanted to stop filling up our prisons with non-violent drug offenders, right? And they wanted to emphasize addiction treatment rather than, you know, Crime and Punishment and spend time in jail. And so, there was a referendum in the popular vote. It said, yeah, let's decriminalize drugs. And I would say there, you know, there's a lot of reasons here, but there was basically a lack of preparation for this to take effect. And the COVID pandemic hit around then, sowing all kinds of chaos. And basically you ended up with, there weren't anywhere near enough treatment programs for addicts. And so many people were on the street using drugs, dealing drugs, being sick, being homeless, a lot of problems. And the policy basically did so poorly it ot repealed. I think it's harmed the idea of drug addiction decriminalization for decades because of how bad the experience was in Portland, especially in the state as a whole. And you could see the same thing happen if we say, this is de-growth. Trump wrecking the economy is degrowth. And we're going to see all the bad things that flow out of that with none f the safety nets that you guys are mentioning. We're going to set back the idea of de-growth by decades, the same way we did the decriminalization of drugs.

Asher Miller  
And it might not honestly be just setting back de-growth. It may be setting back any vision or any policy agenda that anyone has. Like the green New Deal, for example. 

Jason Bradford  
Explain that. 

Asher Miller  
People saying, like, we can't trust the government to enact some kind of vision or an economic plan that's going to really fundamentally shift how the economy works. 

Jason Bradford  
Because Trump has done this. 

Asher Miller  
Because Trump has done this, right. And it's been a disaster. 

Jason Bradford  
You see how much power he has, it's . . . 

Asher Miller  
So we can't, yeah, we can't do that.

Jason Bradford  
But then this just plays into sort of neoliberalism completely, which is also failing us. We're not going to have then planned de-growth. We're going to just have some sort of economic contraction that's unplanned. 

Rob Dietz  
We love hearing from listeners who are doing good work out there in the world, and we hope that maybe you'll find some inspiration in examples like this one, Chuck, who lives in our home state of Oregon here writes in, "Great Crazy Town episode with Asher and Thomas Linzey on Rethinking the Constitution." That was episode 103. I think he's talking about mostly Thomas Linzey, not so much you Asher. 

Asher Miller  
Yeah, of course. 

Rob Dietz  
But it was nice of him to include you. 

Asher Miller  
I'm not going to take that as a compliment to me.

Rob Dietz  
Chuck goes on to say, "I shared this episode with a couple dozen of my friends and family and asked them to do the same." He is talking about how most people don't realize the inherent biases and weaknesses of our Constitution hence the importance of hearing people like Thomas in the Crazy Town episode. And I just want to say also I've corresponded a little bit with Chuck, he's also into local economics and sustainable farming. 

Jason Bradford  
Ooh. 

Rob Dietz  
So thanks so much, Chuck. Folks out there, if you're enjoying Crazy Town, please take some time like Chuck to share episodes that resonate with you, get them out to your friends and colleagues, and please let us know if you're doing something in service of people in the planet. 

Asher Miller  
I only want to hear from people who want to compliment me on my interviews. 

Jason Bradford  
That was an amazing interview. I really loved it. 

Asher Miller  
Thank you.

Rob Dietz  
Send your comment once these guys stopped bloviating to crazytown@postcarbon.org. That's crazytown@postcarbon.org.

Asher Miller  
Okay, so we're just talking about Trump's non de-growth policies. We're talking about, in part, being a reactionary response. You know, a lot of the kind of center left Democratic response doubling down on free trade and liberal policies. I just don't feel like I have a camp to be lined up with. 

Rob Dietz  
Did you hear our ad from our sponsors earlier? Maybe you should go to that camp.

Asher Miller  
Yeah. I don't . . . Are they accepting Jews?

Jason Bradford  
No, no, no. 

Rob Dietz  
Okay, we've got to protect our friend, Jason. You can go to that camp, maybe . . . 

Jason Bradford  
Well, it is weird. It is a weird political moment. And I think there are some people that can't be put into these simplistic camps. Like  whatever the neo right is, nationalism, I guess anti-consumerism now --

Rob Dietz  
It's anti-doll really. 

Jason Bradford  
Versus kind of the neoliberal consensus Democrat, kind of like a Clintonian tradition, which you see a lot of the Democrats sort of rallying around. But then you had this fascinating interview that Ezra Klein had with Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez. She's a Democrat from Southern Washington. 

Rob Dietz  
And she belongs in the Gluesenkamp.

Jason Bradford  
She's got an interesting name. I love it. But she also was sort of saying, she thought 30 dolls is ridiculous. She even said, you know, you're talking to a woman who her kids play with stick, strings, and rocks. And I'm like, yeah! I really liked her. And she says, I represent these constituents that I need to protect from sort of the neoliberalism and and free trade and all this. 

Rob Dietz  
Can I just say, Jason, I picture you as a kid, you've got a stick, there's a really long string with a rock tied to it, you're swinging it over your head until it knocks you out.

Jason Bradford  
Yeah, I did that a lot. 

Asher Miller  
Explains a lot. 

Jason Bradford  
There was also a lot of Legos that I, you know, people would step on. Tinker Toys. 

Asher Miller  
Plastic, yeah. 

Jason Bradford  
So, yeah, I think there's a lot of interesting shuffling maybe happening. And this is this kind of moment of chaos and foment and change. So it's really hard to figure out what's going on. 

Rob Dietz  
Well as usual, if you're trying to figure this stuff out, you can turn to Richard Heinberg, our colleague, senior fellow here at the Post Carbon Institute where the three of us are all gainfully doing our work here in Crazy Town. He recently wrote a great piece that contrasts Trump's, what he calls "Tariff terrorism," with eco-localism. And you know, Richard has this big critique of globalism. He says that both society and nature can lose when globalization worsens inequality while speeding up the depletion of resources and speeding up pollution. But he does not subscribe to the idea that Trump deploying all these tariffs to say, not have to fund Medicaid or whatever, not have to pay taxes for anything, that's not what you're trying to do with eco-localism. So the eco-localism idea is that you want to behave responsibly in a local economy.

Jason Bradford  
There's a difference maybe also we should discuss between de-growth, sort of the de-growth movement, versus what Richard is talking about with eco localism, which may be even an older movement. I think about like -- 

Asher Miller  
It's definitely older. Small is beautiful. Think about that.

Rob Dietz  
Exactly.  Simple living.  Uh huh and - 

Asher Miller  
Is Martha Stewart magazine, simple living? No, just kidding.

Rob Dietz  
No, it's not. 

Jason Bradford  
What's he name? Elena Nora Hodge? 

Asher Miller  
Helena Norberg-Hodge.

Jason Bradford  
Helena Norberg-Hodge, thank you. Trouble with names today. Great work about indigenous communities that hadn't been sort of overwhelmed by globalization and what those places were like. And their ability to sort of be so close to that place and to have a livelihood in that place. And the beauty that she describes and their outlook on life is so different. And she watched this change in the mountains in Tibet. So an incredible story of that, but that's been played out all around the world. And so I think what the eco-localism people talk about is, how do people that have been inundated by modernity, how do they rebuild some semblance of those older ways of being in a place. I don't know if any major political representative speaks at that depth in those terms. If we're focusing more, though, on the local and in being in a place, like in a livelihood in place like, you know, I talk about peasantry, that's maybe a different emphasis than the de-growthers. The de-growthers may want that in the long run. I'm not sure. I think some of them may be steeped a little in ecomodernism and just thinking we have to have local solar panels and local organic farms, but it's still very much a modernity sort of situation.

Rob Dietz  
Spend most of your day on an iPhone. 

Jason Bradford  
Yeah. So I think that's interesting, whereas I think eco-localism would never have to have that argument. It would be much more of a being indigenous to place again kind of perspective.

Asher Miller  
Well let me ask you a question. So here we are. We've talked about, you know, Trump's tariff policies being categorized as being de-growth, right? And we talked about why they're actually not de-growth. And Rob, I think you talked a little bit about the danger of that. So for people who do have a vision of for a de-growth economy and believe that we do need to enact policies and a comprehensive plan to sort of do this effectively so you don't get a counter reaction, or so that people are not inadvertently harm to the process of doing this kind of a transition, what do they do in this moment right now? You know because on the one hand, you look at this situation and you could say, there are actually cracks being created in the system. And we've talked a lot at Post Carbon Institute about the shock doctrine. This quote from Milton Friedman that Naomi Klein made famous number of years ago, maybe two decades ago, in the "Shock Doctrine, just around the idea that when crises happen, things that are politically implausible, they're totally untenable in the moment, become feasible. You know? Become possible because shocks create these opportunities. And here we are in a situation where there are, you know, shocks. I actually feel like as we're recording this right now we're in this weird calm moment a little bit, because we haven't seen, we haven't technically entered into a recessionary state yet, you know, shelves aren't empty or anything. But like, we are facing the potential of there being some real shocks to the economic system in the United States.

Jason Bradford  
And even because of the wars going on the Middle East, right?

Asher Miller  
Totally. Soo what do de-growthers, people who believe in de-growth, what should they be doing right now.

Jason Bradford  
I've been wondering this because I've been waiting for some prominent de-growther to step up and write something like Richard did, but from their perspective, and I haven't heard it yet. And it may be because I don't know how to look on the internet. I don't know.

Asher Miller  
So I have a proposal. Okay? It's not really a proposal, but it's food for thought. Which is, maybe de-growthers need to be at the vanguard of the communal resilience movement right now. So if you think about if it might not be the right strategic political moment to be advocating for contracting the economy, right? For good reasons, but it's not the right time politically. Maybe it's never the right time politically, but certainly not right now. Then where do you put your energies? And maybe they should be putting their energies in efforts to build resilience, relocalization, more eco-local communities because they can serve. We know that there's, or we can anticipate, that there are going to be these disturbances in the economic system. And we've had situations recently where we have supply chain breakdowns of things, people are more vulnerable or people start losing their jobs and really are now dependent more on help from people. And the government is cutting Medicare and certain programs for people. Rallying to support others in our communities maybe is the best thing that we could do, but it's also perhaps a way of showing de-growth policy and action at the local scale.

Jason Bradford  
Because at the big scale, who's going to listen?

Asher Miller  
Right. Who's to listen, and maybe it's not the right time to promote those things. But can we show actually the well being of people in these communities there. That maybe the quote, unquote, "economic activity "is down in these communities, but their quality of life is not, you know? That alternative is being brought alive so that maybe later we could be pointing to these things as the model.

Rob Dietz  
I really like where you're going with this. I've got a good, whatever, 15-20, years of nobody listening to any national policy ideas.

Asher Miller  
Did you hear something, Jason? There's a weird noise.

Jason Bradford  
Is there a third person?

Rob Dietz  
Well, you know what? The eco-localist perspective is kind of a no regret strategy, right? I mean, you could be at the Capitol Building, at the White House, at the United Nations wherever, shouting for the national and international policies that you need to have de-growth or, you know, an economy that contracts down to a sustainably scaled size. And, you know, really the limits to growth folks the, you know, Donella Meadows, Dennis Meadows, Jorgen Randers, back in 1972, they already had this laid out. And we've done so poorly as an international and national community to be able to to enact limits to growth type policies. You could still advocate for that. And you're saying Asher, that maybe the timing is bad because you'll be sort of almost aligned with Trump and right wingers now, but working on eco-localism is always useful. It's a really good no regret strategy. So maybe we can look at what Richard was proposing in that article. 

Jason Bradford  
It makes it easy then. 

Rob Dietz  
Yeah, well, I mean, he said in there that this is the time when eco-localism is desperately needed, because you have rising prices, you've got supply chain disruptions, you've got reductions in government services. So all of this means you've kind of got to take care of yourself at the local level. And if you can focus on local markets, then people kind of can build collective resilience in their communities. And so he sort of gave a little bit of a policy list that I'll share with you guys. 

Jason Bradford  
Okay, hurry up.

Rob Dietz  
Okay. So he said, incentivize cooperative worker owned businesses. You know, small business, worker owned. 

Jason Bradford  
Sure.

Rob Dietz  
Figure out how to meet some needs through non-market means. 

Jason Bradford  
I like that. 

Rob Dietz  
You don't have to buy everything, right? 

Jason Bradford  
Exactly. 

Rob Dietz  
It's the sharing economy. Try to really focus on the well being of people as your measure of success. Obviously, rather than, you know, whatever, GDP or -

Asher Miller  
People and nature. 

Rob Dietz  
Yeah. Also, this is getting more to policy stuff. But, you know, he does talk about how taxing the rich would provide more economic security for folks. That may be hard to do at the local level. But then he kind of gets back to how relocalizing production is actually going to be a way that we're going to get to being able to regulate big corporations because you're going to make smaller local producers more competitive. And then really look into, how do you strengthen the rights of communities and the rights of nature. And that helps you hold onto the fabric of democracy.

Jason Bradford  
Yes, and that's the thing I kind of find hard right now in this moment ishow do you believe that anybody's gonna listen to you at the high levels. Even at the local level I have trouble imagining much of this stuff. I feel like a lot of people will get you if you talk about non-consumerist values. A lot of people may even understand if they know about the anthropogenic mass out there. You know? That there's more mass made by people than there is biomass. If you put that fact in front of them and say look at Klein and Thompson and their book "Abundance" are saying stuff like we need more cement. We need more - No, we need less cement. We need less steel. We need fewer consumer choices. Actually, I think a lot of people you could get on board. The problem is, how dispersed are they? How organized are they? This is why I think it does come down to can you find community in your place and do you have the ability to access land and resources in ways that you can foster regeneration of ecosystems and livelihood in place? And can you develop the skills? 

Rob Dietz  
One of the most inspiring stories from the last year has been the removal of the dams on the Klamath River and the resurgence of salmon and the economy that goes with that salmon among the indigenous people that live there. So there's a less concrete moment right there. Take out the dang dams. 

Asher Miller  
And I would say, we talked earlier about, you know, this idea of calling on Americans to sacrifice, you know. Or telling a story of some kind, you know. Putting forward a moral imperative or some sense of purpose out to people. And you also, bringing you back to the fashion thing, I think for a lot of people, fashion is about a statement of who you are as a person, right? It's a way of being creative in terms of you expressing yourself. Well, when you're dealing with limits, let's say, you can't just buy something online for cheap that gets sent to you and delivered in three days. There are other ways of showing your individuality. Do it creatively. Learn how to sew and repurpose clothing. I mean, that's what you do, Rob, right? Like look at this guy.

Jason Bradford  
I have an idea. I have a project for the three of us. Okay? I've got a little flock of sheep out there. 

Asher Miller  
Yeah you do.

Jason Bradford  
We're gonna learn how to tan those hides and we're gonna be in leather and fleece next year by this time. 

Asher Miller  
Leather and fleece. Leather chaps? 

Jason Bradford  
Yes.

Rob Dietz  
Fleece is the word right here with the producer's angle on this.

Jason Bradford  
Yeah. 

Asher Miller  
Yeah, you're gonna fleece us.

Melody Allison  
That's our show. Thanks for listening. If you like what you heard and you want others to consider these issues, then please sharing Crazy Town with your friends. Hit that share button in your podcast app, or just tell them face to face. Maybe you can start some much needed conversations and do some things together to get us out of Crazy Town. Thanks again for listening and sharing.