🔗 Share this article

More than a twelve months after the election that handed Donald Trump a decisive comeback victory, the Democratic Party has still not released its election autopsy. However, last week, an prominent progressive lobby group released its own. The Harris campaign, its authors argued, failed to connect with core constituencies because it did not focus enough on addressing everyday financial worries. By prioritising the menace to democracy that Trumpist populism represented, liberals overlooked the kitchen-table concerns that were uppermost in many people’s minds.

A Lesson for Europe

As the EU braces for a tumultuous period of politics between now and the end of the decade, that is a message that must be fully understood in Brussels, Paris and Berlin. The White House, as its newly released national security strategy indicates, is optimistic that “nationalist movements in Europe will soon mirror Mr Trump’s success. In the EU’s core nations, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) and Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) top the polls, supported by large swaths of working-class voters. Yet among mainstream leaders and parties, it is difficult to see a response that is adequate to challenging times.

Era-Defining Problems 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 more resilient to pressure by Mr Trump and China. According to a European research institute, the new age of global instability could require an additional €250bn in yearly EU defence spending. A major study last year on European economic competitiveness demanded massive 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 pan-European and national levels, there remains a lack of boldness 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 profoundly timid. In France, the idea of a tax on the super-rich is widely supported with voters. Yet the embattled centrist government – though desperate to cut its budget deficit – refuses to contemplate such a move.

The Cost of Political Paralysis

The truth is that without such measures, the less well-off will bear the brunt of fiscal tightening through spending cuts and increased inequality. Acrimonious recent disputes over retirement reforms in both France and Germany testify to a developing struggle over the future of the European social model – a trend that the RN and the AfD have happily exploited to promote a politics of welfare chauvinism. 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 non-French nationals.

Avoiding a Strategic Advantage for Nationalists

Across the Atlantic, Mr Trump’s pledges to protect blue‑collar interests were largely insincere, as subsequent healthcare reductions and tax breaks for the wealthy demonstrated. But without a convincing progressive alternative from the Harris campaign, they worked on the election circuit. Without a fundamental change in economic approach, social contracts across the continent risk being ripped up. Governments must steer clear of giving this electoral boon to the Trumpian forces already on the march in Europe.