🔗 Share this article

Over a year after the election that delivered Donald Trump a clear-cut return victory, the Democratic party has yet to released its postmortem analysis. However, last week, an influential progressive lobby group 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, liberals overlooked the bread-and-butter issues that were uppermost in many people’s minds.

A Warning for European Capitals

As the EU braces for a turbulent era of politics between now and the end of the decade, that is a lesson that must be fully understood in European capitals. 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. Within Europe'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. But among establishment politicians and parties, it is difficult to see a strategy that is adequate to troubling times.

Era-Defining Challenges and Costly Solutions

The issues 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 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 major study last year on European economic competitiveness called for substantial investment in public goods, to be partly funded by jointly held EU debt.

Such a economic transformation would stimulate growth figures that have flatlined for years.

However, at both the pan-European and national levels, there continues to be a deficit of courage when it comes to revenue raising. The EU’s so-called “budget hawks oppose the idea of shared debt, and Brussels’ budget proposals 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 beleaguered centrist government – while desperate to cut its budget deficit – refuses to contemplate such a move.

The Cost of Political Paralysis

The reality is that in the absence of such measures, the less affluent will bear the brunt of financial adjustment through spending cuts and increased inequality. Acrimonious recent conflicts over pension cutbacks in both France and Germany testify to a growing battle over the future of the European social model – a trend 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 resisted moves to raise the retirement age and has said that it would focus any benefit cuts at foreign residents.

Avoiding a Strategic Advantage for Populists

In the US, Mr Trump’s promises to protect working-class interests were largely insincere, as subsequent healthcare reductions and fiscal benefits for the wealthy demonstrated. Yet in the absence of a convincing progressive alternative from the Harris campaign, they proved effective on the election circuit. Without a radical shift in fiscal policy, societal agreements across the continent risk being torn apart. Policymakers must avoid handing this electoral boon to the populist movements already on the march in Europe.