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Over a twelve months after the vote that handed Donald Trump a clear-cut return victory, the Democratic Party has yet to released its election autopsy. However, recently, an prominent progressive lobby group published its own. Kamala Harris's campaign, its authors argued, did not resonate with key voter blocs because it failed to concentrate enough on tackling basic economic anxieties. In focusing on the menace to democracy that Trumpist populism represented, liberals neglected the kitchen-table concerns that were foremost in many people’s minds.

A Lesson for European Capitals

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 European capitals. The White House, as its recently published national security strategy indicates, is hopeful that “patriotic” parties in Europe will quickly replicate Mr Trump’s success. Within Europe's core nations, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) and Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) lead 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 Challenges and Costly Solutions

The challenges Europe faces are costly and historic. They encompass the war in Ukraine, maintaining 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 Brussels-based thinktank, the new age of global instability could necessitate an additional €250bn in yearly EU defence spending. A major report last year on European economic competitiveness called for substantial investment in public goods, to be financed in part by jointly held EU debt.

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

But, at both the EU-wide and national levels, there continues to be 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 tax on the super-rich is widely supported with voters. Yet the beleaguered centrist government – while 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 affluent will pay the price of financial adjustment through austerity budgets and greater inequality. Bitter recent disputes over pension cutbacks in both France and Germany testify to a growing battle over the future of the European welfare state – 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 stated that it would focus any benefit cuts at non-French nationals.

Preventing a Political Gift for Nationalists

Across the Atlantic, Mr Trump’s promises to protect blue‑collar interests were largely insincere, as subsequent Medicaid cuts and tax breaks for the wealthy demonstrated. But in the absence of a convincing progressive alternative from the Harris campaign, they worked on the election circuit. Without a radical shift in economic approach, social contracts across the continent are in danger of being ripped up. Policymakers must avoid giving this political gift to the Trumpian forces already on the march in Europe.