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More than a twelve months after the vote that delivered Donald Trump a clear-cut return victory, the Democratic party has yet to issued its election autopsy. However, last week, an prominent progressive lobby group published its own. Kamala Harris's campaign, its authors argued, failed to connect with key voter blocs because it failed to concentrate enough on tackling everyday financial worries. In focusing on the menace to democracy that Trumpist populism represented, liberals overlooked the bread-and-butter issues that were uppermost in many people’s minds.

A Lesson for Europe

While Europe prepares for a tumultuous period of politics between now and the end of the decade, that is a lesson that needs to be fully absorbed in Brussels, Paris and Berlin. The White House, as its recently published national security strategy makes clear, is optimistic that “nationalist movements in Europe will soon mirror Mr Trump’s success. In the EU’s core nations, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) and Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) lead the polls, supported by significant segments of working-class voters. Yet among mainstream leaders and parties, it is difficult to see a strategy that is sufficient to challenging times.

Era-Defining Challenges and Costly Solutions

The challenges Europe faces are expensive and era-defining. They encompass the war in Ukraine, sustaining the momentum of the green transition, addressing demographic change and building economies that are less vulnerable to bullying by Mr Trump and China. According to a European thinktank, the new age of global instability could necessitate an additional €250bn in annual EU defence spending. A significant report last year on European economic competitiveness demanded substantial investment in shared infrastructure, to be financed in part by collective EU debt.

Such a fiscal paradigm shift would boost growth figures that have stagnated for years.

But, 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 “frugal” nations oppose the idea of shared debt, and Brussels’ budget proposals for the next seven years are deeply timid. In France, the idea of a tax on the super-rich is widely supported with voters. Yet the embattled centrist government – though desperate to cut its budget deficit – will not consider such a move.

The Price of Political Paralysis

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 greater inequality. Acrimonious recent conflicts over retirement reforms in both France and Germany testify to a developing struggle over the future of the European social model – a phenomenon that the RN and the AfD have happily exploited to promote a politics of welfare chauvinism. Ms Le Pen’s party, for example, has resisted moves to raise the retirement age and has stated that it would target any benefit cuts at foreign residents.

Preventing a Strategic Advantage for Nationalists

In the US, Mr Trump’s pledges to protect working-class interests were deeply disingenuous, as subsequent healthcare reductions and tax breaks for the wealthy demonstrated. Yet without a compelling progressive alternative from the Harris campaign, they worked on the election circuit. Without a radical shift in fiscal policy, societal agreements across the continent are in danger of being torn apart. Policymakers must avoid giving this electoral boon to the populist movements already on the rise in Europe.