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**DECEMBER 8, 2021**

Kuttner on TAP

The Biden-Scholz Connection

The new German chancellor can be both an economic soul mate and a key
ally on Ukraine policy.

Olaf Scholz is Germany's first Social Democratic chancellor in 16
years. He has two big things in common with Joe Biden. He is a
reassuring career politician who takes office amid several crises not of
his own making, including foreign policy. And, like Biden, Scholz will
have to scramble to produce a working legislative majority.

In Biden's case, the obstacle to success is a handful of corporate
Democrats and a 50-50 Senate. Scholz has a united party but governs as
the leader of a three-party coalition that includes the center-right
Free Democrats.

The legacy of Biden's Democratic predecessors includes deregulation
and hyper-globalization, which made life worse for a lot of
working-class voters who abandoned the party of Roosevelt for Trumpism.
In Scholz's case, his SPD predecessor Gerhard Schröder cut social
supports for workers and joined with Germany's conservatives in making
budgetary austerity a centerpiece of economic policy.

Now Scholz, saddled with a finance minister from the Free Democrats,
needs to find some fiscal running room, both for Germany and for the EU,
if he is to carry out both the climate ambitions of his Green coalition
partners and the job creation needs of his own Social Democrats.

Scholz also inherits from both his immediate predecessor Angela Merkel
and from former SPD Chancellor Schröder a coziness with Vladimir Putin,
the most tangible expression of which is the Nord Stream 2 pipeline,
which is not yet operating. Russia already supplies 40 percent of the
EU's natural gas.

On this front, Scholz's government may change things for the better.
His new foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock of the Green Party, has
called for suspension of the pipeline, warning that it would open
Germany to blackmail.

On this front, a closer working relationship with a new, harder-line
German government could help Biden out of a nasty dilemma on Ukraine,
where Putin is gambling that Biden will not go to war if Russia invades,
and there are limited sanctions short of war. Germany has already warned
Russia, at Biden's request, that the pipeline would definitely be shut
down

if Russia invades Ukraine.

In the past, Putin benefited from a docile Germany. A closer
Washington-Berlin alliance would signal not only a resurgent progressive
left on economic issues, but a more effective Russia policy.

~ ROBERT KUTTNER

Follow Robert Kuttner on Twitter

Robert Kuttner's latest book is
The Stakes: 2020 and the Survival of American Democracy
.

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