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Over a twelve months following the vote that delivered Donald Trump a decisive comeback victory, the Democratic party has still not released its election autopsy. However, recently, an influential liberal advocacy organization published its own. The Harris campaign, its writers argued, did not resonate with key voter blocs because it did not focus enough on tackling everyday financial worries. By prioritising the menace to democracy that Trumpist populism represented, progressives neglected the bread-and-butter issues that were uppermost in many people’s minds.

A Warning for European Capitals

While Europe prepares for a turbulent era of politics from now until the end of the decade, that is a lesson that needs to be fully understood in European capitals. The White House, as its recently published national security strategy indicates, is optimistic 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, supported by large swaths of blue-collar voters. But among mainstream leaders and parties, it is difficult to see a response that is sufficient to troubling times.

Major Problems and Expensive Solutions

The challenges 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 less vulnerable to bullying by Mr Trump and China. According to a European research institute, the new age of global instability could require an additional €250bn in annual EU defence spending. A significant report last year on European economic competitiveness called for substantial investment in shared infrastructure, to be partly funded by collective EU debt.

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

But, at both the EU-wide and national levels, there remains a lack of boldness when it comes to generating funds. The EU’s so-called “budget hawks oppose 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 widely supported with voters. But the embattled centrist government – while desperate to cut its budget deficit – refuses to contemplate such a move.

The Cost of Political Paralysis

The reality is that in the absence of such measures, the less well-off will pay the price of fiscal tightening through spending cuts and greater inequality. Acrimonious recent conflicts over retirement reforms in both France and Germany highlight a developing struggle over the future of the European welfare state – a phenomenon 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 stated 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 fiscal benefits for the wealthy underlined. Yet in the absence of a compelling progressive alternative from the Harris campaign, they worked on the election circuit. Without a radical shift in economic approach, social contracts across the continent risk being torn apart. Governments must avoid handing this political gift to the Trumpian forces already on the rise in Europe.