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Over a twelve months after the election that delivered Donald Trump a decisive comeback victory, the Democratic party has yet to issued its election autopsy. However, last week, an prominent liberal advocacy organization published its own. Kamala Harris's campaign, its authors argued, failed to connect with key voter blocs because it did not focus enough on addressing basic economic anxieties. In focusing on the menace to democracy that Maga authoritarianism represented, progressives neglected 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 message that must be fully absorbed in Brussels, Paris and Berlin. The White House, as its newly released national security strategy indicates, is hopeful that “patriotic” parties in Europe will soon replicate Mr Trump’s success. Within Europe's core nations, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) and Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) top the polls, backed by significant segments of working-class voters. But among establishment politicians and parties, it is hard to discern a strategy that is sufficient to challenging times.

Era-Defining Problems 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 research institute, 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 called for massive investment in shared infrastructure, to be financed in part by jointly held 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 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 profoundly unambitious. In France, the idea of a tax on the super-rich is widely supported with voters. But the beleaguered centrist government – though desperate to cut its budget deficit – will not consider such a move.

The Price of Inaction

The truth is that in the absence of such measures, the less affluent will bear the brunt of financial adjustment through austerity budgets and greater inequality. Acrimonious recent conflicts over retirement reforms in both France and Germany testify to a growing battle over the future of the European welfare state – a trend that the RN and the AfD have happily exploited 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 stated that it would target any benefit cuts at foreign residents.

Preventing a Political Gift for Populists

Across the Atlantic, Mr Trump’s pledges to protect working-class interests were largely insincere, as later Medicaid cuts and tax breaks for the wealthy demonstrated. But in the absence of a convincing progressive alternative from the Harris campaign, they worked on the campaign trail. Absent a fundamental change in economic approach, societal agreements across the continent are in danger of being ripped up. Governments must steer clear of giving this electoral boon to the populist movements already on the rise in Europe.