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Over a year after the vote that handed Donald Trump a clear-cut return victory, the Democratic Party has yet to issued its election autopsy. However, last week, an prominent progressive lobby group published 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 menace to democracy that Trumpist populism represented, liberals neglected the kitchen-table concerns that were uppermost in many people’s minds.

A Warning for Europe

While Europe prepares for a tumultuous period of politics between now and the end of the decade, that is a lesson that must be fully absorbed in European capitals. The White House, as its recently published national security strategy makes clear, is hopeful 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, supported by large swaths of blue-collar voters. Yet among mainstream leaders and parties, it is difficult to see a strategy that is adequate to challenging times.

Era-Defining Problems and Expensive Solutions

The issues Europe faces are costly and era-defining. They include 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. As per a European thinktank, the new age of geopolitical insecurity could require an additional €250bn in annual EU defence spending. A significant report last year on European economic competitiveness called for substantial investment in public goods, to be partly funded by collective EU debt.

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

However, 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 oppose the idea of shared debt, and Brussels’ budget proposals for the next seven years are deeply unambitious. In France, the idea of a wealth tax is widely supported with voters. But 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 bear the brunt of financial adjustment through austerity budgets and increased inequality. Acrimonious recent conflicts over pension cutbacks in both France and Germany testify to a developing struggle over the future of the European welfare state – 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 opposed moves to raise the retirement age and has stated that it would focus any benefit cuts at foreign residents.

Avoiding a Strategic Advantage for Nationalists

Across the Atlantic, Mr Trump’s pledges to protect blue‑collar interests were largely insincere, as later Medicaid cuts and fiscal benefits for the wealthy demonstrated. Yet without a convincing progressive alternative from the Harris campaign, they worked on the election circuit. Absent a fundamental change in economic approach, 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.