🔗 Share this article

More than a year following the election that handed Donald Trump a decisive comeback victory, the Democratic Party has yet to issued its postmortem analysis. But, last week, an prominent progressive lobby group published its own. The Harris campaign, its authors argued, failed to connect with key voter blocs because it did not focus enough on addressing basic economic anxieties. By prioritising the threat 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 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 recently published national security strategy makes clear, is optimistic that “patriotic” parties in Europe will quickly mirror Mr Trump’s success. Within Europe's Franco-German engine room, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) and Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) top the polls, supported by large swaths of blue-collar voters. But among mainstream leaders and parties, it is hard to discern a response that is adequate to challenging times.

Major Problems and Costly Solutions

The issues Europe faces are expensive and historic. They encompass 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. According to a Brussels-based research institute, the new age of global instability could require an additional €250bn in annual EU defence spending. A significant 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 stimulate 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 revenue raising. The EU’s so-called “budget hawks resist the idea of collective borrowing, and Brussels’ budget proposals for the next seven years are profoundly unambitious. In France, the idea of a wealth tax is widely supported with voters. But the beleaguered centrist government – while desperate to cut its budget deficit – will not consider such a move.

The Cost of Inaction

The reality is that without such measures, the less affluent will pay the price of fiscal tightening through spending cuts and increased inequality. Bitter recent disputes over pension cutbacks 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 stated that it would focus any benefit cuts at foreign residents.

Preventing a Political Gift for Nationalists

In the US, Mr Trump’s promises to protect blue‑collar interests were deeply disingenuous, as later healthcare reductions and tax breaks for the wealthy underlined. But in the absence of a compelling progressive alternative from the Harris campaign, they proved effective on the campaign trail. Without a radical shift in economic approach, societal agreements across the continent risk being ripped up. Governments must steer clear of giving this electoral boon to the Trumpian forces already on the march in Europe.