🔗 Share this article

Over a year after the election that delivered Donald Trump a clear-cut comeback victory, the Democratic Party has yet to issued its election autopsy. But, recently, an influential progressive lobby group released its own. The Harris campaign, its writers contended, did not resonate with core constituencies because it did not focus enough on tackling basic economic anxieties. 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 Europe

While Europe prepares for a turbulent era of politics between now and the end of the decade, that is a message that must be fully understood in Brussels, Paris and Berlin. The White House, as its recently published national security strategy indicates, is optimistic that “patriotic” parties in Europe will quickly replicate Mr Trump’s success. Within Europe'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. But among mainstream leaders and parties, it is hard to discern a response that is sufficient 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, dealing with demographic change and building economies that are less vulnerable to pressure by Mr Trump and China. According to a Brussels-based 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 financed in part by collective EU debt.

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

But, at both the pan-European and national levels, there continues to be a lack of boldness when it comes to generating funds. The EU’s so-called “budget hawks resist the idea of shared debt, and EU spending plans for the next seven years are profoundly unambitious. In France, the idea of a wealth tax is widely supported with voters. But the embattled centrist government – while desperate to cut its budget deficit – refuses to contemplate such a move.

The Cost of Political Paralysis

The truth is that without such measures, the less affluent will pay the price of financial adjustment through spending cuts and increased inequality. Bitter 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 happily exploited to promote a politics of welfare chauvinism. Ms Le Pen’s party, for example, has resisted moves to raise the retirement age and has stated that it would focus any benefit cuts at foreign residents.

Preventing a Political Gift for Populists

In the US, Mr Trump’s pledges to protect blue‑collar interests were deeply disingenuous, as subsequent healthcare reductions and fiscal benefits for the wealthy underlined. Yet in the absence of a convincing progressive alternative from the Harris campaign, they worked on the election circuit. Without a radical shift in economic approach, social contracts across the continent risk being ripped up. Governments must steer clear of handing this electoral boon to the populist movements already on the march in Europe.