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More than a twelve months following the election that delivered Donald Trump a decisive comeback victory, the Democratic party has yet to released its postmortem analysis. However, last week, an prominent progressive lobby group released its own. Kamala Harris's campaign, its authors contended, did not resonate with key voter blocs because it did not focus enough on tackling basic economic anxieties. By prioritising the menace to democracy that Maga authoritarianism represented, progressives overlooked the kitchen-table concerns that were uppermost in many people’s minds.

A Lesson for Europe

As the EU braces for a tumultuous period of politics between now and 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 indicates, is optimistic that “nationalist movements in Europe will quickly replicate 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, backed by significant segments of blue-collar voters. But among mainstream leaders and parties, it is difficult to see a response that is sufficient to challenging times.

Major Problems and Expensive Solutions

The issues Europe faces are expensive and historic. 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 European thinktank, the new age of global instability could require an additional €250bn in yearly EU defence spending. A major report 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 boost 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 “frugal” nations resist the idea of collective borrowing, and Brussels’ budget proposals for the next seven years are deeply unambitious. In France, the idea of a tax on the super-rich is overwhelmingly popular with voters. Yet the beleaguered centrist government – though desperate to cut its budget deficit – refuses to contemplate such a move.

The Cost of Inaction

The truth is that in the absence of such measures, the less well-off will pay the price of financial adjustment through austerity budgets and increased inequality. Acrimonious recent conflicts over retirement reforms in both France and Germany highlight a growing battle 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 resisted moves to raise the retirement age and has said that it would focus any benefit cuts at foreign residents.

Preventing a Political Gift for Nationalists

In the US, Mr Trump’s pledges to protect working-class interests were largely insincere, as later healthcare reductions and tax breaks for the wealthy demonstrated. Yet in the absence of a convincing progressive counteroffer from the Harris campaign, they worked on the campaign trail. Absent a radical shift in economic approach, societal agreements across the continent are in danger of being ripped up. Governments must avoid handing this political gift to the populist movements already on the rise in Europe.