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More than a year after the election that delivered Donald Trump a clear-cut return victory, the Democratic party has still not released its postmortem analysis. But, last week, an influential 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 tackling basic economic anxieties. By prioritising the threat to democracy that Maga authoritarianism represented, progressives overlooked the kitchen-table concerns that were foremost in many people’s minds.

A Lesson for Europe

While Europe prepares for a tumultuous period of politics from now until the end of the decade, that is a message that needs to 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. Within Europe'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. Yet among establishment politicians and parties, it is hard to discern a response that is adequate to challenging times.

Major Problems 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 developing economies that are more resilient to bullying by Mr Trump and China. As per a European thinktank, the new age of global instability could necessitate an additional €250bn in yearly EU defence spending. A significant report last year on European economic competitiveness demanded substantial investment in public goods, to be partly funded by jointly held EU debt.

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

But, at both the pan-European and national levels, there continues to be a lack of boldness when it comes to revenue raising. The EU’s so-called “budget hawks resist the idea of shared debt, and Brussels’ budget proposals for the next seven years are profoundly unambitious. In France, the idea of a wealth tax is overwhelmingly popular with voters. Yet 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 without such measures, the less well-off will bear the brunt of financial adjustment through austerity budgets and increased inequality. Acrimonious recent disputes over retirement reforms in both France and Germany highlight a growing battle over the future of the European social model – a trend that the RN and the AfD have eagerly leveraged 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 focus any benefit cuts at non-French nationals.

Preventing a Political Gift for Nationalists

Across the Atlantic, Mr Trump’s promises to protect blue‑collar interests were deeply disingenuous, as later healthcare reductions and tax breaks for the wealthy underlined. But in the absence of a convincing progressive counteroffer from the Harris campaign, they worked on the election circuit. Without a radical shift in fiscal policy, social contracts across the continent are in danger of being ripped up. Governments must steer clear of handing this political gift to the Trumpian forces already on the march in Europe.