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More than a twelve months after the election that delivered Donald Trump a clear-cut comeback victory, the Democratic party has yet to released its postmortem analysis. However, last week, an prominent progressive lobby group released its own. Kamala Harris's campaign, its writers contended, failed to connect with key voter blocs because it did not focus enough on addressing basic economic anxieties. By prioritising the threat to democracy that Maga authoritarianism represented, progressives neglected the bread-and-butter issues that were uppermost in many people’s minds.

A Lesson for Europe

While Europe prepares for a turbulent era of politics from now until the end of the decade, that is a message that must be fully absorbed in Brussels, Paris and Berlin. The White House, as its recently published national security strategy makes clear, is hopeful that “patriotic” parties in Europe will soon mirror Mr Trump’s success. In the EU’s Franco-German engine room, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) and Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) top the polls, backed by significant segments of working-class voters. But among mainstream leaders and parties, it is difficult to see a response that is sufficient to challenging times.

Era-Defining Problems and Costly Solutions

The challenges Europe faces are costly and historic. They encompass the war in Ukraine, maintaining the momentum of the green transition, dealing with demographic change and building economies that are less vulnerable to pressure by Mr Trump and China. According to a Brussels-based research institute, the new age of geopolitical insecurity could necessitate an additional €250bn in yearly EU defence spending. A major study last year on European economic competitiveness demanded massive investment in public goods, to be partly funded by collective EU debt.

Such a economic transformation would stimulate growth figures that have stagnated for years.

However, at both the EU-wide and national levels, there continues to be a lack of boldness when it comes to generating funds. The EU’s so-called “budget hawks resist the idea of collective borrowing, and EU spending plans for the next seven years are deeply unambitious. In France, the idea of a tax on the super-rich is overwhelmingly popular with voters. Yet the beleaguered centrist government – though desperate to cut its budget deficit – will not consider such a move.

The Cost of Inaction

The reality is that in the absence of such measures, the less affluent will pay the price of financial adjustment through austerity budgets and increased inequality. Acrimonious recent conflicts over pension cutbacks in both France and Germany testify to a growing battle over the future of the European welfare state – a phenomenon that the RN and the AfD have happily exploited to promote a politics of welfare chauvinism. Ms Le Pen’s party, for example, has resisted moves to raise the retirement age and has said that it would target any benefit cuts at non-French nationals.

Preventing a Political Gift for Nationalists

Across the Atlantic, Mr Trump’s pledges to protect working-class interests were deeply disingenuous, as subsequent healthcare reductions and fiscal benefits for the wealthy underlined. But without a convincing progressive alternative from the Harris campaign, they worked on the campaign trail. Without a fundamental change in fiscal policy, societal agreements across the continent are in danger of being ripped up. Policymakers must avoid giving this political gift to the populist movements already on the march in Europe.