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Over a twelve months following the vote that handed Donald Trump a clear-cut comeback victory, the Democratic party has yet to released its postmortem analysis. However, recently, an influential liberal advocacy organization released its own. The Harris campaign, its authors argued, did not resonate with key voter blocs because it did not focus enough on tackling everyday financial worries. In focusing on the threat to democracy that Maga authoritarianism represented, progressives neglected the kitchen-table concerns that were uppermost in many people’s minds.

A Warning for Europe

While Europe prepares for a turbulent era of politics between now and the end of the decade, that is a message that needs to be fully absorbed in Brussels, Paris and Berlin. The White House, as its newly released national security strategy indicates, is optimistic that “patriotic” parties in Europe will quickly mirror Mr Trump’s success. In the EU’s core nations, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) and Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) lead the polls, supported by large swaths of blue-collar voters. But among mainstream leaders and parties, it is difficult to see a response that is sufficient to challenging times.

Era-Defining Problems and Expensive Solutions

The challenges Europe faces are expensive and era-defining. They encompass the war in Ukraine, sustaining the momentum of the green transition, dealing with demographic change and building economies that are less vulnerable to bullying by Mr Trump and China. As per a Brussels-based research institute, 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 public goods, to be financed in part by collective EU debt.

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

However, at both the EU-wide and national levels, there remains a lack of boldness when it comes to revenue raising. The EU’s so-called “budget hawks oppose the idea of collective borrowing, and Brussels’ budget proposals for the next seven years are profoundly unambitious. In France, the idea of a wealth tax is overwhelmingly popular with voters. Yet the beleaguered centrist government – though desperate to cut its budget deficit – will not consider such a move.

The Price of Political Paralysis

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 increased inequality. Acrimonious recent conflicts over pension cutbacks in both France and Germany testify to a growing battle over the future of the European welfare state – 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 said that it would target any benefit cuts at non-French nationals.

Preventing a Political Gift for Nationalists

Across the Atlantic, Mr Trump’s pledges to protect working-class interests were deeply disingenuous, as later healthcare reductions and tax breaks for the wealthy underlined. But without a convincing progressive counteroffer from the Harris campaign, they proved effective on the campaign trail. Absent a radical shift in fiscal policy, social contracts across the continent are in danger of being torn apart. Governments must avoid handing this political gift to the populist movements already on the march in Europe.