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Over a year after the vote that delivered Donald Trump a decisive return victory, the Democratic Party has still not issued its postmortem analysis. However, last week, an influential liberal advocacy organization published its own. The Harris campaign, its writers contended, did not resonate with core constituencies because it did not focus enough on tackling basic economic anxieties. By prioritising the menace to democracy that Maga authoritarianism 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 from now until the end of the decade, that is a lesson that must be fully understood in Brussels, Paris and Berlin. The White House, as its newly released national security strategy makes clear, is hopeful that “patriotic” parties in Europe will soon mirror Mr Trump’s success. Within Europe'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 establishment politicians 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 costly and era-defining. They encompass the war in Ukraine, sustaining 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 European thinktank, the new age of global instability could require an additional €250bn in annual EU defence spending. A significant study last year on European economic competitiveness called for substantial investment in shared infrastructure, to be financed in part by collective EU debt.

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

However, 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 shared debt, and EU spending plans 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 embattled centrist government – though desperate to cut its budget deficit – refuses to contemplate such a move.

The Cost of Inaction

The reality is that in the absence of such measures, the less well-off will pay the price of fiscal tightening through austerity budgets and greater inequality. Bitter recent conflicts over pension cutbacks in both France and Germany highlight a growing battle over the future of the European social model – a trend that the RN and the AfD have eagerly leveraged 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 foreign residents.

Preventing a Political Gift for Populists

In the US, Mr Trump’s promises to protect blue‑collar interests were largely insincere, as subsequent Medicaid cuts and fiscal benefits for the wealthy demonstrated. Yet in the absence of a convincing progressive alternative from the Harris campaign, they proved effective on the election circuit. Absent a fundamental change in fiscal policy, social contracts across the continent risk being ripped up. Governments must avoid handing this electoral boon to the populist movements already on the march in Europe.