The Right Promised Prosperity. Where Is It?

The new right has made voters an extraordinarily simple offer: immigration brings insecurity, elites have lost control, globalisation has impoverished ordinary citizens, and a return to borders, sovereignty and national preference will restore prosperity.

It is one of the most successful political narratives of our time.

There is only one problem.

When we look at the economic evidence, the promised prosperity is surprisingly difficult to find.

The purpose of this analysis is not to demonstrate that left-wing governments are economically superior by definition. They are not.

Nor is it to pretend that immigration creates no problems, that crime does not exist, or that Europe’s political establishment has governed well. It often has not.

The objective is more uncomfortable:

to compare political promises with measurable outcomes.

And we begin in Germany.

Germany has crossed a line

On 6 September 2026, Alternative für Deutschland achieved its strongest electoral result in its history.

In the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, AfD received 43.8% of the vote, compared with only 17.2% for the CDU, the party of Chancellor Friedrich Merz. It won 39 of the state parliament’s 83 seats, falling only a few seats short of governing alone. (AP News⁠)

This is not another protest vote that can be casually dismissed.

It is a political earthquake.

AfD is classified as right-wing extremist by German domestic intelligence, and some of its regional structures have pushed rhetoric around mass deportation, ethnic identity and national homogeneity that would have been politically unthinkable in Germany only a generation ago. (AP News⁠)

That fact makes one question unavoidable:

How does the country that produced Europe’s most catastrophic experiment with extreme nationalism become receptive again to radical nationalism?

Part of my answer is historical ignorance.

Not ignorance in the childish sense that Germans do not know who Hitler was.

Germany teaches its history extensively.

The deeper form of historical ignorance is believing that history repeats itself wearing the same uniform.

It does not.

Political extremism does not normally begin with dictatorship.

It begins with dissatisfaction.

Then insecurity.

Then the belief that democratic institutions cannot solve ordinary problems.

Then the identification of groups supposedly responsible for decline.

And finally the proposition that extraordinary political measures are justified because ordinary politics has failed.

The names change.

The mechanism does not.

Fear is real. But is the object of the fear real?

Germany unquestionably experienced an enormous migration shock during the previous decade.

Pretending otherwise would be absurd.

But contemporary German politics increasingly appears disconnected from the direction in which the underlying numbers are moving.

At the end of 2025, approximately 14.07 million foreign citizens were registered in Germany.

That number was essentially unchanged from the previous year.

More than one-third were EU citizens; another large share were Europeans from outside the EU. About 68% of Germany’s foreign population was between 20 and 59 years old — precisely the ages at which an ageing economy needs workers most. (Destatis⁠)

And asylum applications had already fallen sharply.

Yet anxiety about migration continued increasing politically.

This distinction matters.

An electorate can experience a problem politically long after that problem has stopped worsening statistically.

That is because politics is not driven by spreadsheets.

It is driven by perception.

And perceived insecurity can become more powerful than measurable insecurity.

That does not make the voter irrational.

It tells us something considerably more worrying:

fear has acquired an economic value in electoral politics.

Immigration and the economic contradiction

Germany presents one of Europe’s great paradoxes.

The country fears immigration while simultaneously facing demographic decline.

Its manufacturing model needs workers.

Its pension system needs contributors.

Its hospitals need staff.

Its construction industry needs labour.

Its ageing population means that the working-age cohort will shrink substantially without migration.

The economically rational debate should therefore be:

what immigration, how much, with what skills, under what integration rules and with what enforcement?

Instead, the political debate increasingly becomes:

immigration versus no immigration.

That is an intellectually inferior question.

And Spain offers an instructive counterexample.

The test: forget ideology and measure results

To evaluate the economic claims of the contemporary right, I have used a deliberately simple framework.

The principal comparison is 2024-2025.

Where possible, governments must have been in office for both years or represent clear political continuity.

I then compare that period with 2022-2023, the preceding post-pandemic biennium.

For each country we should ask:

GDP growth.

GDP per capita where available.

Inflation.

Real wages and household purchasing power.

Employment and unemployment.

Investment.

Public finances.

And finally whether growth exceeded or underperformed the relevant regional benchmark.

China is deliberately excluded because its political and economic system is not meaningfully comparable with these democracies.

The global benchmark is nevertheless useful.

World GDP grew approximately 3.4% in both 2024 and 2025.

Advanced economies grew around 1.8% and 1.9%.

The euro area grew only 0.9% and 1.4%.

Latin America and the Caribbean grew approximately 2.4% in both years. (IMF eLibrary⁠)

These are our reference points.

Spain: the Sánchez problem for conservative economics

Pedro Sánchez provides perhaps Europe’s most inconvenient case.

Spain grew 3.5% in 2024 and roughly 2.9% in 2025.

That is dramatically above the euro-area average. (OECD⁠)

Investment expanded.

Private consumption grew.

The unemployment rate continued falling.

Public debt as a share of GDP declined from around 101.6% in 2024 toward below 100%.

Spain’s performance was not created simply through fiscal extravagance: its government deficit also narrowed. (OECD⁠)

Even more uncomfortable for Europe’s anti-immigration parties, the OECD identifies net migration as an important contributor to Spanish employment and GDP growth.

Between 2022 and 2024, net migration reached record levels, expanding labour supply at the same time that employment and productivity increased. (OECD⁠)

This does not prove that unlimited immigration produces prosperity.

It proves something more modest and much more useful:

immigration is not inherently economically destructive.

Its impact depends upon labour-market absorption, housing supply, skills, integration and productive capacity.

Spain still has serious problems.

Housing affordability is deteriorating.

Unemployment remains high by European standards.

And real wages in early 2025 were still around 4.2% below early-2021 levels. (OECD⁠)

But compared with its European peers, Spain’s recent macroeconomic performance is exceptionally strong.

Italy: Meloni won politically. The economy did not

Now compare Spain with Giorgia Meloni’s Italy.

The contrast could hardly be clearer.

Italy grew:

0.8% in 2024

and approximately

0.5% in 2025. (OECD⁠)

Spain:

3.5%.

2.9%.

Italy:

0.8%.

0.5%.

The euro area itself grew faster than Italy.

And this happened despite Italy receiving extraordinary support from the EU’s Recovery and Resilience programme.

Employment has improved substantially, and Meloni deserves credit for not destabilising Italy’s fiscal architecture.

But the purchasing-power numbers are brutal.

At the beginning of 2025, Italian real wages remained approximately 7.5% below their early-2021 level, the largest decline among the major OECD economies. (OECD⁠)

Inflation fell sharply, but falling inflation does not reverse previous price increases.

Prices stop rising rapidly.

They do not return to where they were.

This is why voters frequently hear economists celebrating disinflation and wonder what exactly they are celebrating.

Their supermarket bill remains higher.

Their salary has not caught up.

Their purchasing power remains weaker.

Italy is almost a perfect example of the distinction between:

macroeconomic stability

and

household prosperity.

Meloni has achieved the first more successfully than many expected.

She has not produced the second.

And compared with the previous two years?

This is where the experiment becomes even more revealing.

Italy’s post-pandemic rebound was already fading before the 2024-2025 period.

The OECD records growth of about 0.9% in 2023, then 0.8% in 2024 and 0.5% in 2025. (OECD⁠)

In other words, Italy did not enter a new growth regime under the right.

It continued slowing.

That is fundamentally different from the political narrative of national economic renewal.

Greece: the right-wing counterexample we must include

Greece prevents us from making the opposite ideological mistake.

Kyriakos Mitsotakis leads a centre-right government.

And Greece has performed well.

Growth has been around or above 2%, unemployment has fallen substantially, investment has recovered and the public debt ratio has declined.

That is clearly better than Italy.

Therefore:

right-wing government does not equal economic failure.

Any analysis claiming otherwise should be discarded.

But Greece also makes another point.

Successful conservative economic government looks very different from populist nationalism.

Mitsotakis has pursued investment, digitisation, EU integration and institutional reform rather than constructing his economic programme primarily around cultural confrontation.

That distinction deserves more attention.

Hungary: fifteen years to demonstrate the nationalist model

Viktor Orbán offers something few political experiments can provide:

time.

He has governed Hungary since 2010.

If sovereign nationalism automatically generated superior prosperity, Hungary should now be one of Europe’s clearest success stories.

It is not.

Growth stagnated after the inflation shock.

Hungary experienced one of the highest inflation rates in the European Union.

Investment weakened.

Its dispute with European institutions complicated access to EU funds.

The country has certainly increased wages and attracted manufacturing investment, particularly in automotive and battery production.

But there is no evidence of the extraordinary economic dividend promised by the broader nationalist thesis.

And after more than a decade in power, blaming liberal predecessors becomes increasingly difficult.

Poland: another inconvenient comparison

Poland under Donald Tusk’s pro-European coalition belongs more to the liberal-centrist than traditional left category.

But it matters because Poland represents the opposite political strategy to Orbán’s Hungary.

Rather than confrontation with Brussels, Poland returned to close EU integration.

Its recent growth performance has been among Europe’s strongest.

Polish real wages also rose markedly: OECD constant-PPP wage data increased from roughly $43,100 in 2023 to $46,900 in 2024 and $49,100 in 2025. (OECD Data Explorer⁠)

That does not establish causality.

But it makes a simple point:

economic sovereignty rhetoric is not a prerequisite for increasing national prosperity.

Brazil: Lula and the growth that was not supposed to happen

Brazil is another uncomfortable case for simple ideological claims.

Under Lula, real GDP grew:

3.4% in 2024

and

2.3% in 2025. (IMF⁠)

That means Brazil dramatically exceeded the Latin American regional average in 2024 and roughly matched it in 2025.

The IMF describes the Brazilian economy as remarkably resilient and notes that Brazil is among the relatively small group of large economies whose 2025 per-capita income exceeded its pre-pandemic trajectory. (IMF eLibrary⁠)

Investment rose 6.9% in 2024 and continued expanding in 2025.

The weakness?

Inflation.

End-period inflation was about 4.8% in 2024 and 4.3% in 2025, above target. (IMF⁠)

Brazil therefore does not offer a perfect progressive success story.

It offers something more credible:

strong growth accompanied by persistent fiscal and inflation risks.

Which is how real economies normally work.

Mexico: perhaps the most interesting left-wing exception

Mexico requires methodological precision.

Claudia Sheinbaum became president only in October 2024.

So she cannot personally be credited with the whole 2024-2025 period.

However, Mexico represents political continuity: Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Sheinbaum belong to the same MORENA political project.

Under that broader definition, Mexico belongs in the comparison.

And here the evidence cuts against the thesis that progressive governments necessarily outperform.

Mexico grew only around 1.4% in 2024 and approximately 0.7% in 2025 according to the OECD’s later estimates. (OECD⁠)

That is poor.

Inflation declined from about 4.7% to 3.8%.

Unemployment remained exceptionally low, around 2.6%-2.7%.

But investment slowed sharply and fiscal consolidation constrained domestic demand. (OECD⁠)

The IMF additionally identifies U.S. tariff uncertainty as an important drag on Mexican consumption and investment. (IMF⁠)

Mexico therefore belongs in this article precisely because it prevents ideological cheating.

A left-populist political project can underperform economically.

Chile: another useful control case

Under Gabriel Boric, Chile recovered from near stagnation.

GDP grew approximately 2.8% in 2024 and 2.5% in 2025 according to the IMF’s latest assessment. (IMF eLibrary⁠)

Compare that with only about 0.2% growth in 2023. (IMF⁠)

Inflation also fell dramatically from the double-digit levels reached after the pandemic.

Again, no miracle.

Chile still suffers from weak potential growth, fiscal pressures and investment constraints.

But the economy certainly did not collapse under a left-wing government.

Argentina: Milei is the case critics of the right must treat seriously

Now we arrive at Javier Milei.

If this article ignored Argentina’s achievements, it would not deserve to be taken seriously.

Milei inherited one of the most dysfunctional macroeconomic situations in the democratic world.

Inflation above 200%.

A fiscal deficit.

Currency controls.

Distorted administered prices.

An exhausted central bank.

His adjustment was enormous.

Argentina’s GDP contracted 1.3% in 2024 before rebounding 4.4% in 2025. (IMF⁠)

Inflation collapsed from an end-period rate of about 117.8% in 2024 to 31.5% in 2025.

Investment, after collapsing 24.6% in 2024, rebounded by 22.5% in 2025. (IMF eLibrary⁠)

Those are substantial achievements.

Milei succeeded where decades of Argentine governments had failed: he imposed fiscal arithmetic on a political system accustomed to pretending arithmetic did not exist.

That deserves recognition.

But the two-year arithmetic matters.

A fall of 1.3% followed by a rise of 4.4% is a meaningful recovery.

It is not the same thing as two consecutive years of rapid growth.

Unemployment also increased during part of the adjustment, informality rose and real-wage growth weakened again later in 2025. (IMF eLibrary⁠)

Therefore Milei is not evidence that the right fails.

Nor is he yet proof of an Argentine economic miracle.

He is an extraordinary stabilisation experiment whose long-term verdict remains open.

Donald Trump: now we can perform the first real test

Trump must be included.

But intellectually honestly.

His second presidency began on 20 January 2025.

We therefore do not yet possess two complete calendar years under Trump.

What we have is:

the full year 2025,

most of 2026,

and credible estimates for the remainder.

That is enough for a provisional comparison.

It is not enough for a final historical verdict.

Trump inherited a growing economy

This point is fundamental.

The American economy did not enter 2025 in recession.

Under Joe Biden, real GDP expanded approximately:

1.9% in 2022

2.5% in 2023

and

2.8% in 2024, according to the latest IMF historical series. (OECD⁠)

Unemployment remained near historic lows.

Inflation had fallen dramatically from its 2022 peak.

Real wages were recovering.

That is Trump’s starting line.

It matters because presidents frequently claim the economy they inherit as soon as they take office and blame predecessors for every weakness that persists.

Both parties do this.

Economics should not.

What happened under Trump?

U.S. GDP growth slowed to approximately 2.0%-2.1% in 2025.

The IMF expects roughly 2.3%-2.4% growth in 2026, while the OECD has been somewhat more cautious. (IMF⁠)

That is not recession.

Nor is it an economic disaster.

But it is also not an acceleration relative to the economy Trump inherited.

2024 under Biden:

2.8%.

2025 under Trump:

around 2.0%.

The OECD identifies several factors behind the slowdown:

cooling employment growth,

a sharp decline in net immigration,

higher tariffs being passed through into prices,

and reductions in non-defence discretionary spending. (OECD⁠)

That finding is particularly significant.

One of Trump’s central economic promises is that restricting immigration and imposing tariffs would strengthen American workers.

Yet the OECD explicitly identifies reduced immigration and higher tariffs as drags on growth.

This is not a Democratic Party talking point.

It is an economic transmission mechanism.

Fewer workers mean less potential output.

Tariffs mean higher input prices unless producers absorb the cost in margins.

There is no ideological mystery involved.

But Americans are richer than Europeans

Yes.

And this must also be acknowledged.

The United States remains substantially richer and more productive than most European economies.

American real wages have recovered faster than Italian or Spanish wages.

OECD PPP-adjusted average annual wages increased from roughly $83,900 in 2023 to $85,500 in 2024 and $87,000 in 2025. (OECD Data Explorer⁠)

The U.S. technology sector remains dominant.

Capital markets are deeper.

Productivity growth is stronger.

Energy is cheaper.

Entrepreneurial investment is greater.

But none of these structural advantages began in January 2025.

They cannot logically be attributed to Trump simply because he became president of the economy that possessed them.

The tariff experiment

Trump’s strongest economic departure from the previous administration has been trade policy.

Tariffs are effectively taxes on imports.

Sometimes they can be strategically justified.

A country may rationally accept higher short-term costs to protect defence industries, reduce geopolitical dependence or develop strategic supply chains.

But they do not become economically costless because they are politically popular.

The IMF notes that U.S. goods inflation increased as tariff effects filtered through prices, even while services inflation moderated. (IMF⁠)

The OECD similarly expects tariff pass-through to weigh on purchasing power and activity. (OECD⁠)

Therefore the correct argument is not:

tariffs are always bad.

It is:

tariffs have a price.

If a government chooses to pay that price for national-security reasons, it should say so.

Pretending the price does not exist is economics by campaign rally.

Now compare the camps

Consider the broadly progressive or centre-left cases.

Spain:

3.5% growth in 2024, around 2.9% in 2025.

Brazil:

3.4%, then 2.3%.

Chile:

roughly 2.8%, then 2.5%.

Mexico:

1.4%, then only around 0.7%.

Australia under Anthony Albanese:

around 1.1% in 2024 and 1.8% in 2025. (OECD⁠)

Now the right or nationalist/conservative cases.

Italy:

0.8%, then 0.5%.

Hungary:

near stagnation.

Greece:

above 2%, a clear positive exception.

Argentina:

-1.3%, followed by +4.4%.

United States under Trump:

about 2.0% in his first full year, following 2.8% in Biden’s final year.

The result is not:

LEFT WINS.

The result is more interesting:

THE CLAIM THAT THE RIGHT SYSTEMATICALLY DELIVERS MORE GROWTH IS NOT VISIBLE IN THE DATA.

And compared with the world?

This comparison makes the conclusion stronger.

World growth:

approximately 3.4%.

Latin America:

approximately 2.4%.

Advanced economies:

roughly 1.8%-1.9%.

Euro area:

0.9%-1.4%. (IMF eLibrary⁠)

Spain massively exceeded its regional benchmark.

Brazil exceeded Latin America’s benchmark in 2024 and roughly matched it in 2025.

Chile roughly matched or slightly exceeded the region.

Mexico underperformed badly.

Italy underperformed even the weak euro area.

Greece outperformed.

Argentina’s rebound exceeded the Latin American average after dramatically underperforming during the initial adjustment.

The United States remained above the advanced-economy average but slowed relative to its own preceding trajectory.

That distinction is essential.

A wealthy country can outperform the world structurally while its government simultaneously makes its own growth rate slower.

Purchasing power matters more than GDP rhetoric

GDP is not the household economy.

A government can announce growth while citizens feel poorer.

That happens when:

population grows faster than output,

housing costs rise faster than wages,

taxes increase,

food and energy prices rise,

or productivity stagnates.

For ordinary households, the relevant question is not:

Did GDP rise?

It is:

What can my salary buy today that it could buy two years ago?

This is where Italy looks particularly weak.

It is also why Spain’s record, while impressive, should not be romanticised.

And it explains much of Trump’s political success in 2024.

Biden presided over strong GDP growth and falling inflation.

But Americans remembered the accumulated increase in the price level.

Economists spoke about disinflation.

Voters spoke about groceries.

Both statements could be simultaneously true.

Security works exactly the same way

Here we return to Germany.

Measured crime matters.

But perceived crime matters politically even more.

Measured immigration matters.

But perceived loss of cultural control can matter electorally more.

Measured GDP matters.

But perceived living standards determine elections.

The great political mistake of centrist and progressive parties has been believing that showing voters an aggregate statistic automatically disproves their lived experience.

It does not.

But the opposite mistake is equally dangerous:

turning subjective insecurity into objective claims that the statistics do not support.

That is where populism becomes intellectually dishonest.

The central contradiction of the new right

The contemporary nationalist right often promises five things simultaneously:

less immigration,

more growth,

lower taxes,

higher military spending,

and stronger welfare protection for citizens.

Economically, those objectives can conflict.

Less immigration reduces labour-force growth in ageing societies.

Lower taxes reduce government revenue.

Higher defence expenditure increases spending.

Protecting pensions increases spending.

Trade barriers can raise prices.

Something eventually has to give.

Arithmetic has no political ideology.

So does the right make countries poorer?

No.

That conclusion would be as simplistic as the proposition this article criticises.

Greece proves it.

Certain structural reforms undertaken in Argentina may ultimately prove highly successful.

The United States remains extraordinarily dynamic.

Conservative governments can absolutely create prosperity.

Progressive governments can absolutely destroy it.

Mexico’s recent weakness demonstrates the second proposition perfectly.

But the international evidence from 2024-2025 does support a narrower and much more important conclusion:

there is no empirical basis for believing that today’s nationalist and populist right possesses a superior economic formula.

That mythology is political.

Not statistical.

What actually appears to produce growth?

Across these countries, the common factors behind stronger performance are remarkably non-ideological.

Investment.

Productivity.

Adequate labour supply.

Predictable institutions.

Access to large markets.

Energy availability.

Infrastructure.

Human capital.

Stable inflation.

Competitive businesses.

Functional public administration.

Fiscal credibility.

And the capacity to attract capital rather than frighten it.

None of these concepts belongs to the left.

None belongs to the right.

They belong to economics.

The uncomfortable conclusion for Europe

AfD’s victory therefore should not be interpreted merely as a German immigration story.

It is part of a much larger political phenomenon.

Millions of citizens believe that the existing economic and institutional order no longer works for them.

Some of that belief is justified.

European growth has been weak.

Housing has become unaffordable.

Real wages were damaged by inflation.

Energy costs are high.

Governments frequently appear incapable of controlling either borders or public expenditure.

But from that legitimate dissatisfaction follows an illegitimate logical jump:

therefore nationalism will make us richer.

Where is the evidence?

Italy does not provide it.

Hungary does not provide it.

Trump has not yet provided it.

Milei may eventually provide part of it, but his experiment remains incomplete.

Greece shows that a conservative government can outperform.

Spain shows that a progressive one can outperform dramatically.

Brazil shows the same outside Europe.

Mexico shows that the left can underperform badly.

The evidence therefore refuses ideological obedience.

Germany should remember something larger than 1933

The lesson of German history is not simply:

“Never vote for a party that looks like the Nazis.”

That is too easy.

The deeper lesson is:

never allow genuine economic dissatisfaction to become a permission slip for abandoning analytical reason.

Fear deserves to be heard.

Immigration must be managed.

Crime must be punished.

Borders must function.

Governments must control spending.

Citizens are entitled to demand all of these things.

But none of them requires inventing demographic catastrophes that the numbers do not show.

And none proves that nationalism creates economic prosperity.

History becomes dangerous when societies remember its photographs but forget its mechanisms.

The arithmetic does not vote

Perhaps the most important fact in politics is also the simplest.

Economic equations do not know who won the election.

Productivity does not vote left.

Investment does not vote right.

Inflation is not nationalist.

A worker’s purchasing power does not care which flag appears behind a prime minister’s podium.

Governments can change narratives overnight.

Economic constraints do not.

And after comparing Trump, Milei, Meloni, Orbán, Mitsotakis, Sánchez, Lula, Sheinbaum’s Mexico, Boric’s Chile and other governments across the same post-pandemic period, the conclusion is difficult to avoid:

the new right has been extraordinarily successful at converting insecurity into votes.

It has been considerably less successful at converting those votes into superior economic growth.

That distinction may define the next political cycle.

Because eventually every revolution has to meet the same adversary.

Arithmetic.

Principal sources

IMF, World Economic Outlook, April 2026; IMF Article IV consultations for the United States, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Chile; OECD Economic Surveys and Employment Outlooks for Spain, Italy, the United States, Mexico and Australia; Eurostat; European Commission country reports and economic forecasts; Destatis; German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees; national statistical agencies including INE, INEGI and IBGE.

Roberto Balbino — CEO, Fintech SCB. Independent analyst of finance, economics, geopolitics and global markets.