🔗 Share this article

More than a year following the vote that delivered Donald Trump a clear-cut return victory, the Democratic Party has still not released its postmortem analysis. However, recently, an prominent liberal advocacy organization published its own. Kamala Harris's campaign, its writers contended, did not resonate with key voter blocs because it failed to concentrate enough on addressing basic economic anxieties. In focusing on the menace to democracy that Maga authoritarianism represented, progressives neglected the kitchen-table concerns that were foremost in many people’s minds.

A Lesson for European Capitals

While Europe prepares for a tumultuous period of politics from now until the end of the decade, that is a message 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 “nationalist movements in Europe will quickly mirror Mr Trump’s success. In the EU’s core nations, 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 mainstream leaders and parties, it is difficult to see a strategy that is adequate to troubling times.

Major Challenges and Expensive Solutions

The challenges Europe faces are costly and era-defining. They include the war in Ukraine, maintaining the momentum of the green transition, addressing demographic change and building economies that are less vulnerable to bullying by Mr Trump and China. As per a European thinktank, the new age of geopolitical insecurity could require an additional €250bn in yearly EU defence spending. A major study last year on European economic competitiveness called for massive investment in public goods, to be financed in part by collective EU debt.

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

However, at both the pan-European and national levels, there remains a lack of boldness when it comes to revenue raising. The EU’s so-called “frugal” nations oppose the idea of shared debt, and EU spending plans for the next seven years are deeply timid. In France, the idea of a wealth tax is overwhelmingly popular with voters. Yet the beleaguered 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 affluent will bear the brunt 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 eagerly leveraged 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 focus 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 in the absence of a convincing progressive counteroffer from the Harris campaign, they proved effective on the campaign trail. Absent a radical shift in economic approach, social contracts across the continent risk being torn apart. Governments must avoid handing this electoral boon to the populist movements already on the march in Europe.