🔗 Share this article

Over a twelve months after the election that delivered Donald Trump a clear-cut return victory, the Democratic party has still not released its election autopsy. However, recently, an prominent progressive lobby group released its own. The Harris campaign, its authors argued, did not resonate with core constituencies because it failed to concentrate enough on tackling basic economic anxieties. In focusing on the menace to democracy that Maga authoritarianism represented, progressives neglected the kitchen-table concerns that were uppermost in many people’s minds.

A Lesson for Europe

While Europe prepares for a tumultuous period of politics from now until the end of the decade, that is a message that needs to be fully understood in European capitals. The White House, as its newly released national security strategy indicates, is hopeful that “nationalist movements in Europe will soon mirror 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. But among mainstream leaders and parties, it is difficult to see a strategy that is adequate to challenging times.

Era-Defining Problems and Costly Solutions

The challenges Europe faces are costly and era-defining. They include the war in Ukraine, sustaining the momentum of the green transition, addressing demographic change and building economies that are less vulnerable to bullying by Mr Trump and China. According to a European research institute, the new age of global instability could require an additional €250bn in yearly EU defence spending. A major study last year on European economic competitiveness demanded massive investment in shared infrastructure, to be financed in part by collective EU debt.

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

But, at both the EU-wide and national levels, there remains a deficit of courage when it comes to revenue raising. The EU’s so-called “frugal” nations resist the idea of collective borrowing, and EU spending plans for the next seven years are profoundly timid. In France, the idea of a wealth tax is overwhelmingly popular with voters. Yet the embattled centrist government – while desperate to cut its budget deficit – will not consider such a move.

The Price of Inaction

The truth is that without such measures, the less well-off will bear the brunt of fiscal tightening through spending cuts 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 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

In the US, Mr Trump’s pledges to protect blue‑collar interests were deeply disingenuous, as later Medicaid cuts and tax breaks for the wealthy demonstrated. But in the absence of a compelling progressive alternative from the Harris campaign, they worked on the campaign trail. Absent a fundamental change in fiscal policy, societal agreements across the continent are in danger of being ripped up. Governments must avoid handing this political gift to the Trumpian forces already on the march in Europe.