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Over a twelve months following the vote that delivered Donald Trump a clear-cut comeback victory, the Democratic Party has still not released its election autopsy. But, last week, an influential liberal advocacy organization released its own. The Harris campaign, its writers argued, did not resonate with key voter blocs because it failed to concentrate enough on addressing everyday financial worries. By prioritising the threat to democracy that Trumpist populism represented, progressives overlooked the bread-and-butter issues that were uppermost in many people’s minds.

A Warning for Europe

While Europe prepares for a turbulent era of politics from now until 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 newly released national security strategy indicates, is optimistic 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) lead the polls, backed by significant segments of working-class voters. But among establishment politicians and parties, it is difficult to see a strategy that is adequate to troubling times.

Era-Defining Problems and Costly Solutions

The challenges Europe faces are costly and era-defining. They encompass the war in Ukraine, sustaining the momentum of the green transition, addressing demographic change and developing economies that are less vulnerable to bullying by Mr Trump and China. As per 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 called for massive investment in shared infrastructure, to be financed in part by jointly held EU debt.

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

But, at both the pan-European and national levels, there remains a deficit of courage 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 tax on the super-rich is overwhelmingly popular with voters. Yet the embattled centrist government – though desperate to cut its budget deficit – refuses to contemplate such a move.

The Cost of Inaction

The truth is that without such measures, the less affluent will pay the price 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 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 Strategic Advantage for Nationalists

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 underlined. But without a convincing progressive alternative from the Harris campaign, they worked on the campaign trail. Without a radical shift in economic approach, social contracts across the continent risk being torn apart. Policymakers must avoid handing this political gift to the Trumpian forces already on the march in Europe.