🔗 Share this article

Over a twelve months after the vote that delivered Donald Trump a clear-cut comeback victory, the Democratic party has yet to released its election autopsy. However, recently, an influential liberal advocacy organization released its own. The Harris campaign, its writers argued, did not resonate with core constituencies because it failed to concentrate enough on addressing everyday financial worries. In focusing on 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

While Europe prepares for a turbulent era of politics between now and the end of the decade, that is a lesson that needs to be fully understood in European capitals. The White House, as its newly released national security strategy makes clear, 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, supported by significant segments of working-class voters. Yet among establishment politicians and parties, it is hard to discern a response that is sufficient to troubling times.

Era-Defining Problems and Expensive Solutions

The challenges Europe faces are costly and era-defining. They include the war in Ukraine, sustaining the momentum of the green transition, dealing with demographic change and developing economies that are less vulnerable to pressure by Mr Trump and China. According to a Brussels-based thinktank, the new age of geopolitical insecurity could require an additional €250bn in annual EU defence spending. A major study last year on European economic competitiveness demanded massive investment in shared infrastructure, to be partly funded by collective EU debt.

Such a fiscal paradigm shift would boost growth figures that have flatlined for years.

However, at both the EU-wide and national levels, there continues to be a lack of boldness when it comes to generating funds. The EU’s so-called “budget hawks resist the idea of collective borrowing, and Brussels’ budget proposals for the next seven years are deeply timid. In France, the idea of a tax on the super-rich is widely supported with voters. But the beleaguered centrist government – while desperate to cut its budget deficit – refuses to contemplate such a move.

The Cost of Inaction

The truth is that in the absence of such measures, the less well-off will pay the price of financial adjustment through austerity budgets and increased inequality. Acrimonious recent disputes over retirement reforms 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 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 foreign residents.

Preventing a Political Gift for Populists

Across the Atlantic, Mr Trump’s promises to protect working-class interests were largely insincere, as subsequent healthcare reductions and tax breaks for the wealthy demonstrated. But in the absence of a convincing progressive alternative from the Harris campaign, they worked on the campaign trail. Absent a fundamental change in fiscal policy, societal agreements across the continent risk being ripped up. Governments must steer clear of handing this political gift to the Trumpian forces already on the rise in Europe.