🔗 Share this article

Over a twelve months following the vote that handed Donald Trump a decisive return victory, the Democratic Party has still not issued its postmortem analysis. But, recently, an influential progressive lobby group released its own. The Harris campaign, its authors argued, did not resonate with core constituencies because it did not focus enough on tackling everyday financial worries. By prioritising the threat to democracy that Maga authoritarianism represented, progressives overlooked the kitchen-table concerns that were uppermost in many people’s minds.

A Lesson for European Capitals

As the EU braces for a tumultuous period 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 hopeful that “nationalist movements 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) top the polls, backed by large swaths of blue-collar voters. But among mainstream leaders and parties, it is difficult to see a strategy that is adequate to challenging times.

Major Problems and Costly Solutions

The challenges Europe faces are costly and era-defining. They encompass the war in Ukraine, maintaining the momentum of the green transition, dealing with demographic change and developing economies that are less vulnerable to bullying by Mr Trump and China. According to a Brussels-based research institute, the new age of geopolitical insecurity could require an additional €250bn in annual EU defence spending. A significant report last year on European economic competitiveness demanded massive investment in shared infrastructure, to be financed in part by collective EU debt.

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

But, 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 “frugal” nations oppose the idea of collective borrowing, and Brussels’ budget proposals 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 – 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 pay the price of financial adjustment through spending cuts and greater inequality. Bitter recent conflicts over pension cutbacks in both France and Germany testify to a developing struggle over the future of the European social model – a phenomenon 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 non-French nationals.

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 tax breaks for the wealthy underlined. Yet in the absence of a compelling progressive counteroffer from the Harris campaign, they worked on the campaign trail. Without a radical shift in fiscal policy, social contracts across the continent are in danger of being ripped up. Policymakers must steer clear of handing this electoral boon to the populist movements already on the rise in Europe.