🔗 Share this article

Over a twelve months after the vote that handed Donald Trump a decisive return victory, the Democratic Party has still not released its postmortem analysis. But, recently, an influential liberal advocacy organization published its own. Kamala Harris's campaign, its writers argued, did not resonate with core constituencies because it failed to concentrate enough on addressing everyday financial worries. By prioritising the threat to democracy that Trumpist populism represented, progressives neglected the bread-and-butter issues that were uppermost in many people’s minds.

A Lesson for European Capitals

As the EU braces for a turbulent era of politics between now and the end of the decade, that is a message that needs to be fully absorbed in European capitals. The White House, as its newly released national security strategy makes clear, is hopeful that “patriotic” parties in Europe will soon replicate 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 large swaths of working-class voters. Yet among establishment politicians and parties, it is difficult to see a strategy that is adequate to challenging times.

Major Challenges and Costly Solutions

The issues Europe faces are expensive and era-defining. They encompass the war in Ukraine, maintaining the momentum of the green transition, dealing with demographic change and building economies that are more resilient to pressure by Mr Trump and China. As per a Brussels-based 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 substantial investment in public goods, to be financed in part by collective EU debt.

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

However, at both the pan-European and national levels, there continues to be a deficit of courage when it comes to generating funds. The EU’s so-called “budget hawks oppose the idea of shared debt, and Brussels’ budget proposals for the next seven years are deeply timid. In France, the idea of a wealth tax is widely supported with voters. But the embattled centrist government – though desperate to cut its budget deficit – refuses to contemplate such a move.

The Price of Political Paralysis

The truth is that in the absence of such measures, the less affluent will pay the price of fiscal tightening through spending cuts and greater inequality. Acrimonious recent disputes over pension cutbacks in both France and Germany highlight a growing battle 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 target any benefit cuts at non-French nationals.

Preventing a Strategic Advantage for Nationalists

Across the Atlantic, Mr Trump’s pledges to protect working-class interests were deeply disingenuous, as subsequent Medicaid cuts and tax breaks for the wealthy demonstrated. Yet without a compelling progressive counteroffer from the Harris campaign, they worked on the campaign trail. Absent a radical shift in fiscal policy, social contracts across the continent risk being ripped up. Policymakers must steer clear of handing this electoral boon to the Trumpian forces already on the rise in Europe.