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Over a twelve months following the election that handed Donald Trump a decisive return victory, the Democratic Party has yet to released its election autopsy. However, last week, an prominent progressive lobby group published its own. The Harris campaign, its writers contended, failed to connect with core constituencies because it failed to concentrate enough on addressing basic economic anxieties. In focusing on the menace to democracy that Trumpist populism represented, liberals overlooked the kitchen-table concerns that were uppermost in many people’s minds.

A Warning for European Capitals

As the EU braces for a turbulent era of politics from now until the end of the decade, that is a lesson that needs to be fully absorbed in Brussels, Paris and Berlin. The White House, as its newly released national security strategy makes clear, is optimistic that “patriotic” parties in Europe will soon mirror Mr Trump’s success. In the EU’s core nations, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) and Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) top the polls, supported by significant segments of blue-collar voters. Yet among mainstream leaders and parties, it is difficult to see a response that is sufficient to challenging times.

Major Challenges and Costly 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 building economies that are more resilient to bullying by Mr Trump and China. According to a Brussels-based research institute, the new age of geopolitical insecurity could require an additional €250bn in annual EU defence spending. A major study last year on European economic competitiveness called for substantial investment in public goods, to be financed in part by jointly held EU debt.

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

But, at both the EU-wide and national levels, there remains a deficit of courage when it comes to revenue raising. The EU’s so-called “budget hawks oppose the idea of collective borrowing, and EU spending plans for the next seven years are profoundly unambitious. In France, the idea of a tax on the super-rich is overwhelmingly popular with voters. But the embattled centrist government – while desperate to cut its budget deficit – refuses to contemplate such a move.

The Price of Inaction

The truth is that in the absence of such measures, the less affluent will pay the price of fiscal tightening through spending cuts and increased inequality. Bitter recent conflicts over retirement reforms in both France and Germany testify to a growing battle 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 resisted moves to raise the retirement age and has said that it would target any benefit cuts at foreign residents.

Preventing a Strategic Advantage for Nationalists

In the US, Mr Trump’s pledges to protect working-class interests were largely insincere, as later healthcare reductions and fiscal benefits for the wealthy demonstrated. But in the absence of a convincing progressive alternative from the Harris campaign, they worked on the election circuit. Absent a radical shift in economic approach, societal agreements across the continent risk being ripped up. Policymakers must avoid handing this electoral boon to the populist movements already on the march in Europe.