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Over a year after the election that handed Donald Trump a decisive comeback victory, the Democratic party has still not released its election autopsy. However, recently, an prominent progressive lobby group published its own. Kamala Harris's campaign, its writers contended, failed to connect with core constituencies because it did not focus enough on tackling everyday financial worries. In focusing on the threat to democracy that Trumpist populism represented, liberals neglected the bread-and-butter issues that were uppermost in many people’s minds.

A Lesson for European Capitals

While Europe prepares for a tumultuous period of politics between now and 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 newly released national security strategy makes clear, is optimistic that “nationalist movements in Europe will quickly 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) lead the polls, supported by large swaths of blue-collar voters. Yet among establishment politicians 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 expensive and historic. They encompass the war in Ukraine, maintaining the momentum of the green transition, addressing demographic change and building 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 necessitate an additional €250bn in yearly EU defence spending. A significant report last year on European economic competitiveness demanded massive investment in public goods, to be financed in part by collective 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 deficit of courage when it comes to generating funds. The EU’s so-called “frugal” nations resist the idea of collective borrowing, and Brussels’ budget proposals for the next seven years are deeply timid. In France, the idea of a wealth tax is widely supported with voters. Yet the embattled centrist government – while desperate to cut its budget deficit – refuses to contemplate such a move.

The Cost of Inaction

The truth is that without such measures, the less affluent will bear the brunt of fiscal tightening through austerity budgets and increased inequality. Bitter recent disputes over pension cutbacks in both France and Germany testify to a growing battle over the future of the European social model – a phenomenon 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 opposed moves to raise the retirement age and has stated that it would target any benefit cuts at non-French nationals.

Preventing a Strategic Advantage for Nationalists

Across the Atlantic, Mr Trump’s promises to protect working-class interests were deeply disingenuous, as later healthcare reductions and tax breaks for the wealthy underlined. But without 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. Governments must avoid giving this political gift to the Trumpian forces already on the march in Europe.