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Over a twelve months after the vote that handed Donald Trump a clear-cut comeback victory, the Democratic party has still not issued its postmortem analysis. But, last week, an prominent progressive lobby group released its own. The Harris campaign, its writers argued, did not resonate with key voter blocs because it did not focus 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 European Capitals

While Europe prepares for a tumultuous period of politics between now and the end of the decade, that is a lesson that must be fully understood in Brussels, Paris and Berlin. The White House, as its recently published national security strategy makes clear, is optimistic that “patriotic” parties in Europe will quickly replicate 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, supported by large swaths of working-class voters. Yet among establishment politicians and parties, it is hard to discern a strategy that is adequate to troubling times.

Major Challenges and Costly 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 pressure by Mr Trump and China. As per a European research institute, the new age of geopolitical insecurity could require an additional €250bn in yearly EU defence spending. A significant report last year on European economic competitiveness called for substantial investment in shared infrastructure, to be partly funded 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 lack of boldness when it comes to revenue raising. The EU’s so-called “frugal” nations resist the idea of shared debt, and Brussels’ budget proposals for the next seven years are deeply unambitious. In France, the idea of a wealth tax is widely supported with voters. Yet the embattled centrist government – while desperate to cut its budget deficit – refuses to contemplate such a move.

The Price of Political Paralysis

The reality is that in the absence of such measures, the less well-off will bear the brunt of fiscal tightening through spending cuts and increased inequality. Acrimonious recent conflicts over retirement reforms in both France and Germany testify to a growing battle over the future of the European social model – a phenomenon that the RN and the AfD have eagerly leveraged to promote a politics of welfare chauvinism. 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 non-French nationals.

Avoiding a Strategic Advantage for Nationalists

Across the Atlantic, Mr Trump’s pledges to protect working-class interests were deeply disingenuous, as subsequent Medicaid cuts and tax breaks for the wealthy demonstrated. But without a convincing progressive counteroffer from the Harris campaign, they proved effective on the campaign trail. Without a radical shift in fiscal policy, societal agreements across the continent are in danger of being torn apart. Governments must steer clear of giving this electoral boon to the populist movements already on the rise in Europe.