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More than a twelve months after the election that delivered Donald Trump a decisive return victory, the Democratic Party has still not issued its postmortem analysis. But, recently, an prominent liberal advocacy organization released its own. The Harris campaign, its authors argued, did not resonate with key voter blocs because it did not focus enough on addressing everyday financial worries. By prioritising the menace to democracy that Trumpist populism represented, progressives neglected the bread-and-butter issues that were foremost in many people’s minds.

A Lesson for Europe

While Europe prepares for a turbulent era of politics between now and the end of the decade, that is a message that needs to be fully understood in Brussels, Paris and Berlin. The White House, as its recently published national security strategy indicates, is optimistic that “nationalist movements in Europe will quickly replicate Mr Trump’s success. In the EU’s core nations, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) and Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) lead the polls, supported by significant segments of working-class voters. Yet among establishment politicians and parties, it is difficult to see a strategy that is sufficient to challenging times.

Major Problems and Expensive Solutions

The issues Europe faces are costly and era-defining. They include the war in Ukraine, maintaining the momentum of the green transition, addressing demographic change and developing economies that are more resilient to pressure by Mr Trump and China. According to a Brussels-based research institute, the new age of global instability could require an additional €250bn in annual EU defence spending. A major study last year on European economic competitiveness demanded substantial investment in public goods, to be partly funded by collective EU debt.

Such a fiscal paradigm shift would stimulate growth figures that have stagnated for years.

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

The Price of Inaction

The truth is that without such measures, the less affluent will bear the brunt of fiscal tightening through spending cuts and increased inequality. Acrimonious recent conflicts over pension cutbacks in both France and Germany testify to a developing struggle over the future of the European welfare state – a trend that the RN and the AfD have happily exploited to promote a politics of nativist social policy. Ms Le Pen’s party, for example, has opposed moves to raise the retirement age and has said that it would target any benefit cuts at non-French nationals.

Preventing a Strategic Advantage for Nationalists

Across the Atlantic, Mr Trump’s pledges to protect working-class interests were deeply disingenuous, as later Medicaid cuts and tax breaks for the wealthy underlined. Yet without a compelling progressive alternative from the Harris campaign, they worked on the election circuit. Without a fundamental change in fiscal policy, societal agreements across the continent risk being ripped up. Governments must steer clear of giving this electoral boon to the Trumpian forces already on the rise in Europe.