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More than a year following the vote that delivered Donald Trump a decisive comeback victory, the Democratic Party has yet to issued its election autopsy. However, recently, an influential progressive lobby group released its own. The Harris campaign, its writers argued, did not resonate with key voter blocs because it failed to concentrate enough on addressing everyday financial worries. In focusing on the threat to democracy that Maga authoritarianism represented, progressives neglected the kitchen-table concerns that were foremost in many people’s minds.

A Lesson for Europe

As the EU braces for a tumultuous period of politics from now until 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 indicates, is hopeful that “patriotic” parties in Europe will soon mirror 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 significant segments of working-class voters. Yet among mainstream leaders and parties, it is difficult to see a response that is sufficient to troubling times.

Era-Defining Problems and Costly Solutions

The challenges Europe faces are expensive and historic. They include the war in Ukraine, maintaining the momentum of the green transition, dealing with demographic change and developing economies that are less vulnerable to pressure by Mr Trump and China. As per a Brussels-based thinktank, the new age of geopolitical insecurity could require an additional €250bn in yearly EU defence spending. A major report last year on European economic competitiveness called for massive investment in public goods, to be partly funded by jointly held EU debt.

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

But, at both the pan-European and national levels, there continues to be a deficit of courage when it comes to generating funds. The EU’s so-called “budget hawks oppose the idea of shared debt, and Brussels’ budget proposals for the next seven years are profoundly unambitious. In France, the idea of a tax on the super-rich is widely supported with voters. Yet the embattled centrist government – while desperate to cut its budget deficit – will not consider such a move.

The Price of Inaction

The reality is that in the absence of such measures, the less well-off will bear the brunt of fiscal tightening through austerity budgets and greater inequality. Acrimonious recent disputes 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 happily exploited 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 non-French nationals.

Preventing a Political Gift for Nationalists

Across the Atlantic, Mr Trump’s promises to protect blue‑collar interests were largely insincere, as later Medicaid cuts and tax breaks for the wealthy demonstrated. But without a convincing progressive alternative from the Harris campaign, they worked on the campaign trail. Absent a fundamental change in fiscal policy, social contracts across the continent risk being ripped up. Governments must steer clear of handing this political gift to the populist movements already on the march in Europe.