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Over a year after the vote that delivered Donald Trump a clear-cut return victory, the Democratic party has yet to issued its election autopsy. However, recently, an influential liberal advocacy organization released its own. The Harris campaign, its authors argued, failed to connect with key voter blocs because it failed to concentrate enough on addressing basic economic anxieties. By prioritising the threat to democracy that Trumpist populism represented, progressives neglected the kitchen-table concerns that were uppermost in many people’s minds.

A Lesson for European Capitals

While Europe prepares for a tumultuous period 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 “nationalist movements in Europe will quickly mirror 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 blue-collar voters. But among establishment politicians and parties, it is hard to discern a strategy that is adequate to troubling times.

Major Challenges and Expensive Solutions

The challenges Europe faces are costly and era-defining. They include the war in Ukraine, sustaining the momentum of the green transition, dealing with demographic change and building economies that are less vulnerable to pressure by Mr Trump and China. As per a Brussels-based research institute, the new age of geopolitical insecurity could require an additional €250bn in yearly EU defence spending. A major study last year on European economic competitiveness demanded massive investment in shared infrastructure, to be financed in part by jointly held EU debt.

Such a economic transformation would stimulate growth figures that have flatlined 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 “frugal” nations resist the idea of shared debt, and Brussels’ budget proposals for the next seven years are profoundly timid. In France, the idea of a tax on the super-rich is overwhelmingly popular with voters. Yet the beleaguered centrist government – while desperate to cut its budget deficit – will not consider such a move.

The Price of Inaction

The truth is that in the absence of such measures, the less well-off will bear the brunt of fiscal tightening through austerity budgets and greater inequality. Bitter recent conflicts over retirement reforms in both France and Germany testify to 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 welfare chauvinism. 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 Political Gift for Populists

In the US, Mr Trump’s pledges to protect blue‑collar interests were deeply disingenuous, as subsequent healthcare reductions and fiscal benefits for the wealthy demonstrated. But in the absence of a convincing progressive counteroffer from the Harris campaign, they worked on the election circuit. Absent a fundamental change in fiscal policy, societal agreements across the continent risk being torn apart. Policymakers must avoid giving this political gift to the populist movements already on the march in Europe.