🔗 Share this article

Over a year following the election that handed Donald Trump a clear-cut return victory, the Democratic party has still not released its election autopsy. But, recently, an prominent progressive lobby group released its own. Kamala Harris's campaign, its authors contended, failed to connect with key voter blocs because it did not focus enough on addressing basic economic anxieties. In focusing on the threat to democracy that Trumpist populism represented, progressives overlooked the bread-and-butter issues that were foremost in many people’s minds.

A Warning 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 Brussels, Paris and Berlin. The White House, as its newly released national security strategy indicates, is hopeful that “nationalist movements in Europe will soon replicate Mr Trump’s success. In the EU’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. But among mainstream leaders and parties, it is hard to discern a strategy that is adequate to challenging times.

Era-Defining Challenges and Costly Solutions

The challenges Europe faces are costly and era-defining. They include the war in Ukraine, maintaining the momentum of the green transition, addressing demographic change and developing economies that are more resilient to bullying by Mr Trump and China. According to a European thinktank, the new age of global instability could necessitate 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 fiscal paradigm shift would boost growth figures that have flatlined for years.

But, 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 “frugal” nations resist the idea of shared debt, and EU spending plans for the next seven years are deeply unambitious. In France, the idea of a wealth tax is overwhelmingly popular with voters. Yet the embattled centrist government – though desperate to cut its budget deficit – will not consider such a move.

The Price of Inaction

The reality is that without such measures, the less well-off will bear the brunt of fiscal tightening through austerity budgets and increased inequality. Acrimonious recent conflicts over retirement reforms in both France and Germany highlight 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 welfare chauvinism. 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 non-French nationals.

Avoiding a Political Gift for Nationalists

In the US, Mr Trump’s promises to protect working-class interests were deeply disingenuous, as subsequent healthcare reductions and fiscal benefits for the wealthy demonstrated. Yet in the absence of a convincing progressive counteroffer from the Harris campaign, they proved effective on the campaign trail. Absent a radical shift in fiscal policy, societal agreements across the continent risk being torn apart. Governments must avoid handing this electoral boon to the Trumpian forces already on the march in Europe.