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More than a year following the vote that handed Donald Trump a decisive comeback victory, the Democratic Party has yet to issued its postmortem analysis. However, recently, an prominent progressive lobby group published its own. Kamala Harris's campaign, its authors argued, failed to connect with core constituencies because it failed to concentrate enough on addressing basic economic anxieties. In focusing on the menace to democracy that Trumpist populism represented, progressives overlooked 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 must be fully understood 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. Within Europe's core nations, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) and Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) lead the polls, backed by significant segments of blue-collar voters. Yet among mainstream leaders and parties, it is difficult to see a response that is adequate to challenging times.

Era-Defining Problems and Costly Solutions

The challenges Europe faces are costly and historic. They encompass the war in Ukraine, maintaining the momentum of the green transition, dealing with demographic change and building economies that are more resilient to pressure by Mr Trump and China. According to a Brussels-based research institute, 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 called for massive 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.

But, at both the EU-wide and national levels, there continues to be a deficit of courage when it comes to generating funds. The EU’s so-called “budget hawks oppose 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 Price of Inaction

The truth is that without such measures, the less affluent will bear the brunt of fiscal tightening through austerity budgets and greater inequality. Bitter recent conflicts over pension cutbacks in both France and Germany testify to a developing struggle over the future of the European welfare state – 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 said that it would focus any benefit cuts at foreign residents.

Preventing a Strategic Advantage for Nationalists

In the US, Mr Trump’s pledges to protect blue‑collar interests were largely insincere, as later Medicaid cuts and tax breaks for the wealthy demonstrated. Yet without a convincing progressive alternative from the Harris campaign, they worked on the campaign trail. Without a radical shift in fiscal policy, social contracts across the continent are in danger of being torn apart. Governments must steer clear of giving this political gift to the Trumpian forces already on the march in Europe.