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Over a year after the election that handed Donald Trump a decisive return victory, the Democratic Party has yet to issued its election autopsy. However, recently, an prominent liberal advocacy organization released its own. Kamala Harris's campaign, its authors contended, failed to connect with key voter blocs because it did not focus enough on addressing basic economic anxieties. In focusing on the menace to democracy that Maga authoritarianism represented, liberals 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 message that must be fully absorbed in Brussels, Paris and Berlin. The White House, as its newly released national security strategy indicates, is hopeful that “patriotic” parties in Europe will soon replicate Mr Trump’s success. In the EU’s Franco-German engine room, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) and Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) top the polls, backed by large swaths of working-class voters. Yet among mainstream leaders and parties, it is hard to discern a strategy that is sufficient to troubling times.

Era-Defining Problems and Expensive Solutions

The challenges Europe faces are expensive and era-defining. They encompass the war in Ukraine, maintaining the momentum of the green transition, addressing demographic change and developing economies that are more resilient to pressure by Mr Trump and China. As per a Brussels-based research institute, the new age of geopolitical insecurity could necessitate an additional €250bn in yearly EU defence spending. A major report last year on European economic competitiveness called for substantial investment in shared infrastructure, to be financed in part by collective EU debt.

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

However, at both the pan-European and national levels, there continues to be a deficit of courage when it comes to generating funds. The EU’s so-called “frugal” nations oppose the idea of collective borrowing, and Brussels’ budget proposals for the next seven years are profoundly unambitious. In France, the idea of a tax on the super-rich 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 financial adjustment through spending cuts and greater inequality. Acrimonious recent conflicts over pension cutbacks in both France and Germany testify to a growing battle 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

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 demonstrated. Yet in the absence of a convincing progressive counteroffer from the Harris campaign, they worked on the campaign trail. Absent a fundamental change in economic approach, social contracts across the continent risk being ripped up. Policymakers must steer clear of giving this electoral boon to the Trumpian forces already on the rise in Europe.