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Over a twelve months following the election that delivered Donald Trump a clear-cut comeback victory, the Democratic Party has yet to released its postmortem analysis. But, last week, an prominent liberal advocacy organization released its own. The Harris campaign, its authors argued, failed to connect with core constituencies because it failed to concentrate enough on tackling everyday financial worries. In focusing on the menace to democracy that Trumpist populism represented, liberals neglected the kitchen-table concerns that were foremost in many people’s minds.

A Lesson for Europe

While Europe prepares for a tumultuous period of politics between now and the end of the decade, that is a lesson that needs to be fully absorbed in Brussels, Paris and Berlin. The White House, as its newly released national security strategy indicates, is hopeful that “patriotic” parties in Europe will soon 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, supported by large swaths of working-class voters. Yet among mainstream leaders and parties, it is hard to discern a response that is sufficient to troubling times.

Era-Defining Challenges and Expensive Solutions

The issues Europe faces are costly 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 pressure 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 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 stimulate 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 collective borrowing, and Brussels’ budget proposals for the next seven years are profoundly unambitious. In France, the idea of a wealth tax is widely supported with voters. But the beleaguered centrist government – though desperate to cut its budget deficit – refuses to contemplate such a move.

The Price of Political Paralysis

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 conflicts over pension cutbacks in both France and Germany highlight a developing struggle over the future of the European welfare state – a phenomenon 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 resisted moves to raise the retirement age and has said that it would focus any benefit cuts at foreign residents.

Preventing a Political Gift for Populists

In the US, Mr Trump’s promises to protect working-class interests were largely insincere, as subsequent healthcare reductions and tax breaks for the wealthy demonstrated. Yet 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 are in danger of being torn apart. Governments must avoid giving this electoral boon to the Trumpian forces already on the rise in Europe.