NO ONE EVER MADE MONEY INVESTING IN DONALD:

The new Biden team has struck the right rhetorical note, arguing that NS2 is "a bad deal for Europe" and promising that the U.S. will not "roll over" for Russia. Since Navalny's arrest and sentencing, key European figures have stepped up their rhetoric as well. Tom Tugendhat, who chairs the Foreign Affairs Committee in the U.K.'s House of Commons, has on multiple occasions advocated for NS2 to be killed. By an overwhelming 581-50 margin, the European Parliament passed a resolution calling on the EU to "immediately" halt work on NS2. Even the French, who up until recently backed Germany in support of the project, have changed their tune. When asked earlier this month if France was in favor of abandoning the project, Secretary of State for European Affairs Clément Beaune confirmed that it was. [...]

The easier path forward would be for the Germans to pull the plug, unilaterally ending the pipeline. If it were done in a coherent fashion, and timed to coincide with statements of support from across Europe, this would send a powerful message that Putin's way of doing business will no longer be tolerated in Europe.

The other path forward would be for the United States to kill the pipeline. Contrary to statements from the Kremlin, the bipartisan enactment of sanctions via the 2019 Protecting Europe's Energy Security Act (PEESA) in December 2019 and the 2021 PEESA Clarification Act (PEESCA) has left NS2 on life support. The sanctions have forced the NS2 consortium into delay after delay, which has in turn likely resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in cost overruns. They've also led company after company to abandon the project, leaving the consortium with an ever-shrinking pool of firms from which to obtain critical services and technical expertise. Moscow and Berlin have responded by claiming that completion of the pipeline is inevitable and can be accomplished in the near term, in a desperate bid to save the project. But that simply isn't the case. Left to do their work, the PEESA/PEESCA sanctions will kill NS2 sooner rather than later.

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