“Degrowth Donald”

We now have ample examples that Donald Trump is not an abundance President

The title of this blog post comes from this article, where the author originally humorously tagged Donald Trump as a degrowth activist because of his opposition to renewables, his tariffs to constrain trade, and the potential economic impacts of those policies.  Except now it’s not so humorous.  Turns out that having the federal government capriciously renege on grants and contracts, try to stop in-construction renewable energy projects, impose large tariffs on imports that are key supply chain inputs for infrastructure, housing, and manufacturing, and much, much more might have negative economic impacts for the United States.  The label is, sadly, now more accurate than humorous.

But here I want to zoom in on the policy implications of the second Trump Administration for an abundance agenda.  One might think that a Republican Presidency would advance deregulation, which would have at least some overlap with an abundance agenda.  It turns out that this Administration’s perspective is instead: “Deregulation for my friends, red tape for my enemies.”  (A riff off of the old saying that autocrats pursue “Everything for my friends, the law for my enemies.”)  For now, and just focusing on the wind industry, we see this Administration: cancelling permits for an approved project, based on (never publicly revealed) claims about harms to fisheries and wildlife; issuing a stop-work order for an in construction project based on nebulous (and apparently specious) claims about national security risks; demanding high-level clearance for all permit reviews for future wind and solar projects; imposing requirements that will ban most or all future renewable projects on federal lands;  and threatening to strictly enforce the Migratory Bird Treaty Act against all wind turbines that might have killed birds over the course of their operations.  Trump’s Energy Secretary claims that the reviews of various projects are required because the past Administration “rushed” approvals of wind and solar projects, which produced sloppy mistakes – of course, this is the Administration that wants to fast-track approvals for projects that it likes (mining, oil and gas), so it’s hard to see any sort of good faith argument here.

Indeed, the capricious nature of the Administration’s policies are not even accomplishing the goals it purports to set of advancing fossil fuel development or American manufacturing:  Employment is down in both sectors this year so far.  And while production of crude oil is up for now, new drilling is down, and production looks like it will decrease going forward.

In short, we have an Administration that is making specious, often inconsistent arguments; is making decisions that are not in good faith; and is reneging on prior agreements and deals.  I can not think of any policy that is more inconsistent with driving significant private investment in the energy and other infrastructure we need.  This is the exact opposite of what an abundance policy agenda would be.  Advocates of abundance reforms should be very, very careful in doing any kind of deals with this Administration.

abundance, deregulation, MBTA, renewables, solar power, Trump Administration, wind power