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More than a year following the vote that handed Donald Trump a decisive return victory, the Democratic Party has still not issued its postmortem analysis. But, recently, an influential liberal advocacy organization published its own. The Harris campaign, its authors contended, did not resonate with key voter blocs because it failed to concentrate 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 Warning for European Capitals

As the EU braces for a tumultuous period of politics between now and 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 optimistic that “patriotic” parties in Europe will soon mirror 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 blue-collar voters. But among establishment politicians and parties, it is hard to discern a strategy that is sufficient to challenging times.

Era-Defining Challenges and Expensive Solutions

The challenges Europe faces are expensive and historic. 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. According to 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 demanded massive investment in public goods, to be partly funded by collective EU debt.

Such a fiscal paradigm shift 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 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 timid. In France, the idea of a tax on the super-rich is overwhelmingly popular with voters. But 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 without such measures, the less well-off will bear the brunt of financial adjustment through spending cuts and increased inequality. Bitter recent conflicts over retirement reforms 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 resisted moves to raise the retirement age and has said that it would target any benefit cuts at non-French nationals.

Avoiding a Strategic Advantage for Nationalists

In the US, Mr Trump’s pledges to protect blue‑collar interests were deeply disingenuous, as subsequent healthcare reductions and tax breaks for the wealthy underlined. But without a compelling progressive counteroffer from the Harris campaign, they proved effective on the election circuit. Absent a radical shift in economic approach, social contracts across the continent risk being ripped up. Governments must avoid handing this political gift to the Trumpian forces already on the rise in Europe.