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Over a year after the vote that delivered Donald Trump a clear-cut return victory, the Democratic party has still not released its election autopsy. However, last week, an prominent liberal advocacy organization released its own. Kamala Harris's campaign, its authors contended, failed to connect with core constituencies because it failed to concentrate enough on tackling basic economic anxieties. By prioritising the threat to democracy that Trumpist populism represented, liberals neglected the bread-and-butter issues that were uppermost in many people’s minds.

A Warning for Europe

While Europe prepares for a turbulent era of politics from now until 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 recently published national security strategy indicates, is optimistic that “patriotic” parties in Europe will quickly 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 significant segments of working-class voters. But among establishment politicians and parties, it is hard to discern a strategy that is sufficient to troubling times.

Era-Defining Problems and Costly Solutions

The challenges Europe faces are costly and era-defining. They encompass the war in Ukraine, maintaining the momentum of the green transition, dealing with demographic change and developing economies that are more resilient to bullying by Mr Trump and China. As per a Brussels-based thinktank, the new age of global instability could require an additional €250bn in yearly EU defence spending. A significant 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 boost growth figures that have flatlined for years.

But, at both the pan-European and national levels, there remains a deficit of courage when it comes to revenue raising. The EU’s so-called “budget hawks resist the idea of collective borrowing, and EU spending plans for the next seven years are profoundly timid. In France, the idea of a wealth tax is overwhelmingly popular with voters. But the beleaguered centrist government – while desperate to cut its budget deficit – will not consider such a move.

The Cost of Inaction

The truth is that in the absence of such measures, the less well-off will bear the brunt of fiscal tightening through spending cuts and increased inequality. Bitter recent conflicts over retirement reforms in both France and Germany highlight a developing struggle over the future of the European welfare state – a trend that the RN and the AfD have eagerly leveraged 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.

Avoiding a Political Gift for Nationalists

In the US, Mr Trump’s promises to protect blue‑collar interests were deeply disingenuous, as later healthcare reductions and tax breaks for the wealthy demonstrated. Yet in the absence of a compelling progressive alternative from the Harris campaign, they worked on the campaign trail. Without a radical shift in fiscal policy, societal agreements across the continent risk being ripped up. Policymakers must avoid giving this electoral boon to the Trumpian forces already on the rise in Europe.