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Over a year after the vote that handed Donald Trump a decisive return victory, the Democratic party has still not issued its postmortem analysis. However, last week, an influential progressive lobby group released its own. The Harris campaign, its authors contended, failed to connect with core constituencies because it failed to concentrate enough on addressing everyday financial worries. 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 Lesson for Europe

While Europe prepares 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 European capitals. The White House, as its recently published national security strategy indicates, 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) top the polls, backed by large swaths of blue-collar voters. But among establishment politicians and parties, it is difficult to see a response that is adequate to challenging times.

Era-Defining Problems and Expensive Solutions

The challenges Europe faces are costly and historic. They encompass the war in Ukraine, sustaining the momentum of the green transition, addressing demographic change and building economies that are more resilient to pressure by Mr Trump and China. According to a European thinktank, 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 demanded substantial 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 continues to be a lack of boldness when it comes to revenue raising. The EU’s so-called “budget hawks resist the idea of collective borrowing, and EU spending plans for the next seven years are deeply 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 reality is that in the absence of such measures, the less affluent will bear the brunt of financial adjustment through austerity budgets and increased inequality. Bitter recent disputes over pension cutbacks 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 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 focus any benefit cuts at non-French nationals.

Avoiding a Political Gift for Nationalists

Across the Atlantic, Mr Trump’s promises to protect working-class interests were largely insincere, as later Medicaid cuts and fiscal benefits for the wealthy underlined. But in the absence of a compelling progressive alternative from the Harris campaign, they proved effective on the election circuit. Absent a radical shift in fiscal policy, social contracts across the continent are in danger of being ripped up. Policymakers must avoid handing this political gift to the Trumpian forces already on the rise in Europe.