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More than a year after the election that handed Donald Trump a clear-cut comeback victory, the Democratic party has yet to released its election autopsy. But, last week, an influential liberal advocacy organization released its own. The Harris campaign, its authors contended, failed to connect with key voter blocs because it failed to concentrate enough on tackling basic economic anxieties. In focusing on the threat to democracy that Maga authoritarianism represented, liberals neglected the kitchen-table concerns that were foremost in many people’s minds.

A Lesson for European Capitals

As the EU braces for a turbulent era of politics from now until 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 newly released national security strategy indicates, is hopeful that “nationalist movements in Europe will soon mirror 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 blue-collar voters. But among establishment politicians and parties, it is difficult to see a strategy that is adequate to challenging times.

Major Challenges and Expensive Solutions

The challenges Europe faces are costly and era-defining. They encompass the war in Ukraine, maintaining 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 European research institute, the new age of geopolitical insecurity could necessitate an additional €250bn in annual EU defence spending. A significant study last year on European economic competitiveness called for substantial 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 pan-European and national levels, there remains a lack of boldness when it comes to revenue raising. The EU’s so-called “frugal” nations oppose the idea of shared debt, and Brussels’ budget proposals for the next seven years are profoundly 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 Inaction

The reality is that in the absence of such measures, the less well-off will pay the price of financial adjustment through austerity budgets and increased 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 opposed moves to raise the retirement age and has stated that it would target any benefit cuts at non-French nationals.

Preventing a Strategic Advantage for Nationalists

In the US, Mr Trump’s pledges to protect working-class interests were largely insincere, as later Medicaid cuts and fiscal benefits for the wealthy underlined. Yet without a compelling progressive counteroffer from the Harris campaign, they worked on the campaign trail. Without a fundamental change in economic approach, societal agreements across the continent are in danger of being torn apart. Governments must steer clear of handing this electoral boon to the Trumpian forces already on the rise in Europe.