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More than a year following 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 released its own. Kamala Harris's campaign, its authors argued, did not resonate with key voter blocs because it failed to concentrate enough on tackling everyday financial worries. By prioritising the threat to democracy that Maga authoritarianism represented, progressives overlooked the bread-and-butter issues that were uppermost in many people’s minds.

A Lesson for Europe

As the EU braces 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 recently published national security strategy makes clear, is optimistic that “nationalist movements in Europe will soon 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) top the polls, supported by large swaths of working-class voters. Yet among mainstream leaders and parties, it is hard to discern a strategy that is adequate to challenging times.

Era-Defining Challenges and Expensive Solutions

The issues Europe faces are costly and era-defining. They encompass the war in Ukraine, sustaining the momentum of the green transition, addressing demographic change and building economies that are more resilient 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 yearly EU defence spending. A major study last year on European economic competitiveness called for massive investment in public goods, to be financed in part by jointly held EU debt.

Such a fiscal paradigm shift would stimulate growth figures that have flatlined for years.

But, at both the pan-European and national levels, there continues to be a deficit of courage when it comes to revenue raising. The EU’s so-called “frugal” nations resist the idea of shared debt, 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 embattled centrist government – though desperate to cut its budget deficit – will not consider such a move.

The Cost of Inaction

The truth is that in the absence of such measures, the less well-off will pay the price of fiscal tightening through spending cuts and greater inequality. Bitter recent conflicts over retirement reforms in both France and Germany highlight a developing struggle over the future of the European social model – a trend that the RN and the AfD have eagerly leveraged 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.

Avoiding a Political Gift for Populists

Across the Atlantic, Mr Trump’s promises to protect blue‑collar interests were deeply disingenuous, as subsequent Medicaid cuts and tax breaks for the wealthy underlined. Yet without a convincing progressive counteroffer from the Harris campaign, they proved effective on the campaign trail. Absent a fundamental change in fiscal policy, social contracts across the continent are in danger of being ripped up. Policymakers must avoid handing this electoral boon to the populist movements already on the rise in Europe.