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More than a twelve months after the vote that handed Donald Trump a clear-cut comeback victory, the Democratic party has yet to released its election autopsy. But, last week, an prominent progressive lobby group published its own. The Harris campaign, its writers contended, failed to connect with key voter blocs because it did not focus enough on addressing basic economic anxieties. By prioritising the menace to democracy that Trumpist populism represented, progressives neglected the bread-and-butter issues that were foremost in many people’s minds.

A Lesson for Europe

While Europe prepares for a turbulent era of politics between now and the end of the decade, that is a lesson that needs to be fully understood in Brussels, Paris and Berlin. The White House, as its recently published national security strategy makes clear, 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 large swaths of blue-collar voters. But among establishment politicians and parties, it is hard to discern a response that is sufficient to troubling times.

Major Challenges and Costly Solutions

The issues Europe faces are expensive and era-defining. They include the war in Ukraine, sustaining the momentum of the green transition, addressing demographic change and developing economies that are less vulnerable to bullying by Mr Trump and China. According to a European thinktank, the new age of geopolitical insecurity could necessitate an additional €250bn in annual EU defence spending. A major report last year on European economic competitiveness demanded substantial investment in shared infrastructure, to be partly funded by jointly held EU debt.

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

But, at both the EU-wide and national levels, there continues to be a deficit of courage when it comes to revenue raising. The EU’s so-called “frugal” nations 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 overwhelmingly popular with voters. Yet the embattled centrist government – though desperate to cut its budget deficit – refuses to contemplate such a move.

The Price of Political Paralysis

The truth is that without such measures, the less well-off will bear the brunt of financial adjustment through austerity budgets and greater inequality. Bitter recent conflicts over retirement reforms in both France and Germany highlight 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 nativist social policy. 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 foreign residents.

Preventing a Strategic Advantage for Nationalists

Across the Atlantic, Mr Trump’s pledges to protect working-class interests were largely insincere, as later Medicaid cuts and tax breaks for the wealthy underlined. Yet without a convincing progressive counteroffer from the Harris campaign, they proved effective on the election circuit. Without a fundamental change in economic approach, societal agreements across the continent risk being torn apart. Policymakers must avoid giving this electoral boon to the populist movements already on the rise in Europe.