A Report Card on the U.S. Local Economy Movement

Apr 30, 2026

My colleagues at Utopies, a localist-minded think tank in Paris with over one hundred employees, have invited me to present next month an overview of the U.S. local economy movement. Below is a rough draft of what I plan to say, organized as a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats). I welcome your feedback!

Strengths:

(1) Our Evidence – As the years roll by, studies and examples continue to pour in supporting the local economy worldview: That attraction of outside, nonlocal corporations is an exorbitant, counterproductive way to promote economic development. That greater levels of local ownership and community self-reliance increase local income, wealth, and jobs. And that almost everything we care about in our community—social equality, voting, volunteering, tourism, entrepreneurship, environmental protection, resilience—is served by more and healthier local businesses. Frankly, we’ve won the war of ideas. And recent polling shows that the American public stands squarely behind us.

(2) Investment Reform – After successfully changing securities laws a decade ago, literally millions of Americans are using crowdfunding tools to invest billions of dollars into local companies. Over that same period, we have increased the number of local investment funds open to grassroots investors from a half dozen to nearly 100. The state of Michigan is about to pass a tax credit for local investors, and this could spread rapidly to other states. The free ride Wall Street has enjoyed with exclusive access to our savings is coming to an end.

(3) Community Wealth Building (CWB) – A growing number of cities like Cleveland (OH), Chicago (IL), Rochester (NY), and Baltimore (MD), inspired by the work of the Democracy Collaborative, are experimenting with anchor institutions like universities, hospitals, and government agencies to revive their local economies. By mobilizing anchors to engage in strategic local purchasing, local investing, and local partnerships, they are achieving significant job and income growth on the ground. Because CWB also embraces worker ownership, this movement is stimulating the spread of platform cooperatives and worker cooperatives.

(4) Antitrust Reform – Our friends at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance have led an increasingly powerful national movement to revive and strengthen laws to eliminate the unfair competition caused by the growing number of monopolists and oligopolists in our society. A federal jury in Manhattan ruled that Live Nation and Ticketmaster operated as an illegal monopoly, validating years of complaints from fans, artists, and independent venues.

(5) Local Pockets of Success – Across the country, there are small but powerful local economy organizations. Local First Arizona, for example, has built a powerful network of more than 2,700 local businesses funded with a diversity of revenue streams, including fee-for-service for entrepreneurship support through accelerators, boot camps, technical assistance, and microloans. It has also scored important policy successes within the state, including reforms of state and local procurement practices.

Weaknesses:

(1) Wobbly Local Business Networks – What was once a powerful network of literally hundreds of cities representing tens of thousands of local businesses has largely fallen apart. Poor leadership decisions a decade ago unraveled the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, and the vacuum left behind has been filled by many smaller organizations that are poorly funded and only occasionally coordinate with one another. A dozen other strong local business networks like Local First Arizona can still be found in states like Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, South Carolina, and Washington, but they operate independently of one another, and their collective influence has waned.

(2) Poor Revenue-Generation Models – An explanation for the first point is that most local business networks and related organizations failed to develop reliable revenue models. Most depended, and many of the survivors still depend, on foundations and philanthropists, whose contributions are small and undependable. The few that received federal grants are recovering from the massive cuts that came from the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). There are business models these networks and organizations could use, and in The Local Economy Solution, published in 2015, I described 27 of them, including consulting firms, local purchasing apps, and local investment funds. If the movement is to thrive, local business networks need to test out, perfect, and spread these models. (Kudos to Utopies, by the way, which has successfully developed a suite of local economy tools they make available on a fee-for-service basis.)

(3) Pushing Political Agendas – Too many of the networks and organizations representing local businesses are run by progressive activists who have agendas at odds with the businesses they represent. The truth is that local businesses interested in local economy building have views that span the political spectrum. And imposing otherwise laudable agenda items on many, ranging from racial justice to economic degrowth, weakens our ability to forge a larger movement.

(4) Personal Grievances – If you continue to live in the hometown where you went to high school, you know how slights from long ago—you insulted me, you stole my boyfriend, you threw my books down the staircase—linger. The modern local economy movement, which I trace to the Battle of Seattle in 1999, now has a generation of personality clashes that make building a stronger movement challenging. I remain hopeful that these wounds can be healed and collaboration improved through some combination of personal growth, forgiveness, and therapy.

Opportunities:

(1) Community Solar – I will soon release a study I performed for the City of Irvine, showing how complete solarization of its buildings can save its 330,000 residents more than $40 billion of utility bills to Southern California Edison over the next 20 years. Utility rates, driven by AI data centers and aging transmission and distribution systems, are rising, while the costs of solar cells and batteries continue to plummet. There is an opportunity for every city on the planet to solarize, save money, and save the planet, all while reclaiming local control of their economies. This can serve as the foundation for a new, powerful local economy movement everywhere.

(2) Devolution – Since the election of Donald Trump, most of the federal government’s policies—outside immigration enforcement and warmaking—have largely collapsed. Our once world-class science establishment, for example, has been hollowed out by budget cuts, frivolous lawsuits, and the nutty junk-science theories of RFK Jr. Smart state and local governments are beginning to step into this space, which will give us more control over our local economic development policies.

(3) Political Platform – We actually have a well-defined platform of policy ideas that could enjoy support from across the political spectrum. These include ending subsidies for big business, breaking up monopolies, streamlining local regulations and zoning, making it easier to create local investment funds and local stock exchanges, reclaiming local control over banks and money, and awarding tax breaks to companies that embrace higher environmental and social performance standards. Currently, our views are pretty much ignored by both parties. Leading Republican and Democratic governors, for example, remain addicted to corporate welfare for global companies promising jobs through subsidized data centers, auto manufacturing plants, and Amazon warehouses.

(4) Seeds for the Future — Many great organizations and great leaders, all starved for funds, could provide the basis of a new, stronger local economy movement. Besides the groups already mentioned, I’d also like to call out: the American Independent Business Alliance, which is continuing to support local business networks; the American Sustainable Business Network, which is trying to coordinate state and national policy initiatives supportive of local businesses; the Schumacher Center for New Economics, which is keeping the deep tradition of decentralism alive; the Main Street Alliance, which is connecting local issues with national issues; and a hundreds other great groups. With leadership, capital, creativity, and luck, our movement can rise again.

Threats:

(1) Fascism – We need to call our current government, and related movements all over the world, by the appropriate name—fascism. The characteristics include weakening competitive democracy, centralizing power around a charismatic leader, maintaining power through corporate oligarchs and mass violence, and undermining all other institutions that hold central power accountable, including the press, universities, law firms, and scientific establishments. Fascism, whether on the right (as is the case now) or on the left (as has been the case in Venezuela and Cuba), is poisonous for localism. Local economies require vibrant local democracies, and we need to become an explicitly pro-democracy movement.

(2) Climate Disasters – Climate disruption poses one of the most critical threats to communities worldwide through floods, wildfires, pestilence, famines, viruses like COVID-19, and a thousand other dangers we cannot predict. Our government has systematically removed “climate change” from the vocabulary of public policy and repealed all kinds of policies—regulations, grants, science centers, tax credits—enacted to lower carbon emissions. The burden now falls squarely on towns and cities to remedy these foolish national abdications from responsible behavior.

(3) War – Finally, the fervor shown by our President to threaten military action—against Venezuela, Denmark (for Greenland), Iran, and Cuba—must be a top concern for localists in the United States. We are wasting tens of billions of dollars, destroying our alliances, and sullying our reputation for no discernible benefits. Even though many of the results of these wars—such as rising oil prices—favor localization, war inevitably invites unforeseen, ugly consequences. Communities must establish and spread better tools of nonviolent conflict resolution and political change.

My SWOT is hardly comprehensive, but it suggests a movement that is barely past its infancy. When thousands of cities in our country bring together millions of local businesses, when our policy recommendations dominate national policies, when both political parties are courting our support, we will have finally begun to achieve our full potential.

As always, we have a rich smorgasbord of news, opinions, events, and job opportunities for you to explore. This week, you’ll find articles: arguing that the TSA should become a purpose trust corporation like Patagonia; describing the latest indigenous investment work of Turtle Island Community Capital; reporting on recent CWB successes in New York City; warning about the dangers of credit union consolidation; and calling out the surprising opponents of public banking.

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NEWS

A Better Way to Fly: TSA Should Be Purpose Trust-Owned (The Stakehold, April 21) advocates for this structure, adopted by corporations like Patagonia, “to provide secure jobs for employees and secure travel for passengers.”
Replacing Extractive Financing with Fixed Capital (Impact Alpha, April 19) highlights how native-led Turtle Island Community Capital (TICC) refinanced a high-interest loan for Relative Arts, supporting this contemporary Indigenous fashion and design retail store. “Debt has been used against Indigenous communities so many times that it’s really hard to rebuild the type of trusting connection that allows people to imagine a world where debt can be supportive instead of extractive,” said TICC’s Alexander Sterling.
New Economy Project Advances Community Ownership in New York (Center for Community Investment, April 16) through ecosystem stewardship, which “combines technical assistance, strategic guidance, capital access, and
connective infrastructure to support community-led groups pursuing
ownership on their own terms.”
Why Are Federal Regulators Trying To Take Away This Credit Union? (Next City, April 15). People Trust Community Federal Credit Union in Little Rock, AK,—featured in the film, The Barber of Little Rock—may become another casualty of credit union consolidation trends.
How Public Banks Can Meet Public Needs (Shelterforce, April 15) restates the benefits of public banking, while calling out some of the biggest opponents, community banks, and why.

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