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Over a twelve months after the vote that handed Donald Trump a decisive comeback victory, the Democratic Party has still not released its election autopsy. But, last week, an influential liberal advocacy organization published its own. The Harris campaign, its writers contended, 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, liberals overlooked the kitchen-table concerns that were uppermost in many people’s minds.

A Warning for Europe

As the EU braces for a turbulent era of politics between now and 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 recently published national security strategy makes clear, is hopeful 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) lead the polls, backed by large swaths of blue-collar voters. Yet among establishment politicians and parties, it is difficult to see a response that is adequate to challenging times.

Major Challenges and Costly Solutions

The challenges Europe faces are costly and historic. They include the war in Ukraine, sustaining the momentum of the green transition, dealing with demographic change and developing economies that are less vulnerable to bullying by Mr Trump and China. According to a Brussels-based thinktank, the new age of global instability could require an additional €250bn in annual EU defence spending. A significant report last year on European economic competitiveness called for massive investment in public goods, to be financed in part by collective EU debt.

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

However, at both the EU-wide and national levels, there remains a deficit of courage when it comes to generating funds. The EU’s so-called “budget hawks resist the idea of collective borrowing, and EU spending plans for the next seven years are profoundly timid. In France, the idea of a tax on the super-rich is overwhelmingly popular with voters. But the beleaguered centrist government – though desperate to cut its budget deficit – refuses to contemplate 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 financial adjustment through spending cuts 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 welfare chauvinism. Ms Le Pen’s party, for example, has opposed 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 blue‑collar interests were largely insincere, as subsequent Medicaid cuts and tax breaks for the wealthy demonstrated. But in the absence of a compelling progressive counteroffer from the Harris campaign, they proved effective on the campaign trail. Absent a radical shift in fiscal policy, societal agreements across the continent are in danger of being torn apart. Policymakers must avoid giving this political gift to the populist movements already on the rise in Europe.