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Over a year after the vote that delivered Donald Trump a decisive comeback victory, the Democratic Party has yet to released its election autopsy. However, last week, an influential liberal advocacy organization published its own. The Harris campaign, its writers argued, did not resonate with key voter blocs because it failed to concentrate enough on tackling basic economic anxieties. By prioritising 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 tumultuous period of politics from now until the end of the decade, that is a lesson that must be fully understood in European capitals. The White House, as its newly released national security strategy makes clear, is optimistic that “nationalist movements 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) lead the polls, backed by significant segments of working-class voters. But among establishment politicians and parties, it is difficult to see a response that is adequate to challenging times.

Era-Defining Challenges and Costly Solutions

The issues Europe faces are expensive and era-defining. They include 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 Brussels-based thinktank, the new age of geopolitical insecurity could require an additional €250bn in annual EU defence spending. A significant study last year on European economic competitiveness demanded massive investment in shared infrastructure, to be financed in part by collective EU debt.

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

However, at both the pan-European and national levels, there continues to be a lack of boldness when it comes to revenue raising. The EU’s so-called “budget hawks resist the idea of shared debt, and Brussels’ budget proposals for the next seven years are deeply 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 – refuses to contemplate 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 fiscal tightening through spending cuts and increased inequality. Bitter recent disputes over retirement reforms in both France and Germany testify to a growing battle over the future of the European social model – 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 said that it would focus any benefit cuts at foreign residents.

Avoiding a Political Gift for Populists

Across the Atlantic, Mr Trump’s pledges to protect working-class interests were largely insincere, as subsequent healthcare reductions and fiscal benefits for the wealthy underlined. But without a convincing progressive alternative from the Harris campaign, they worked on the campaign trail. Without a radical shift 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 march in Europe.