🔗 Share this article

Over a year after the election that handed Donald Trump a decisive return victory, the Democratic Party has yet to released its postmortem analysis. But, last week, an prominent liberal advocacy organization released its own. Kamala Harris's campaign, its authors contended, failed to connect with key voter blocs because it failed to concentrate enough on addressing basic economic anxieties. By prioritising the menace to democracy that Trumpist populism represented, progressives neglected the kitchen-table concerns that were foremost in many people’s minds.

A Lesson for Europe

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 Brussels, Paris and Berlin. The White House, as its recently published national security strategy makes clear, is optimistic that “nationalist movements in Europe will soon mirror Mr Trump’s success. In the EU’s Franco-German engine room, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) and Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) lead the polls, supported by significant segments of blue-collar voters. Yet among mainstream leaders and parties, it is hard to discern a strategy that is adequate to challenging times.

Major Problems and Expensive 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 building economies that are less vulnerable to bullying by Mr Trump and China. As per a Brussels-based thinktank, the new age of global instability could require an additional €250bn in yearly EU defence spending. A significant study last year on European economic competitiveness demanded substantial investment in shared infrastructure, to be financed in part by jointly held EU debt.

Such a fiscal paradigm shift would stimulate growth figures that have stagnated for years.

But, at both the pan-European and national levels, there remains a deficit of courage when it comes to generating funds. The EU’s so-called “budget hawks oppose the idea of collective borrowing, 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 embattled centrist government – though desperate to cut its budget deficit – refuses to contemplate such a move.

The Cost of Inaction

The reality is that without such measures, the less affluent will bear the brunt of fiscal tightening through austerity budgets and increased inequality. Acrimonious recent disputes over retirement reforms in both France and Germany testify to a developing struggle over the future of the European welfare state – a trend that the RN and the AfD have eagerly leveraged to promote a politics of welfare chauvinism. Ms Le Pen’s party, for example, has opposed moves to raise the retirement age and has said that it would target any benefit cuts at foreign residents.

Avoiding a Political Gift for Nationalists

Across the Atlantic, Mr Trump’s pledges to protect working-class interests were largely insincere, as subsequent healthcare reductions and fiscal benefits for the wealthy underlined. But without a compelling progressive alternative from the Harris campaign, they proved effective on the election circuit. Absent a radical shift in fiscal policy, social contracts across the continent are in danger of being ripped up. Governments must avoid giving this electoral boon to the populist movements already on the march in Europe.