Cuba has opened up its first wholesale market in an economy dominated by government-run enterprises.

 

State-run newspaper Granma says the market is part of an ongoing effort to “reorganize” commerce on the communist island. The market will sell beans, beer, sugar, cigars and other basic staples for 20 to 30 percent less than the products are sold throughout the country.

 

Since 2010, the government has authorized about 500,000 people to operate private businesses, and many of them have long-sought access to a wholesale marketplace. Their wait is not over. The government says the market known as the Mercabal is only open to 35 worker-owned cooperatives in Havana, at least for now.

 

The state-run economy accounts for 70 to 80 percent of the Cuban economy.
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A New York City councilman and a tenants’ rights group said they will investigate allegations that the real estate company formerly controlled by Jared Kushner, a presidential adviser and President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, falsified building permits.

In allegations first uncovered by The Associated Press, the Kushner Companies is accused of submitting false statements between 2013 and 2016, stating it had no rent-controlled apartments in buildings it owned when it actually had hundreds.

Rent-controlled apartments come under tighter oversight from city officials when there is construction work or renovations in buildings. 

The councilman and tenants’ rights group charged the Kushner Companies of lying about rent-control in order to harass and force out tenants paying low rents so it can move in those who would pay more.

They also blame city officials for allegedly being unaware what Kushner was up to.

Rent control is a fixture in many big U.S. cities, where the government regulates rent to help make housing more affordable.

Some tenants in Kushner-owned buildings told the AP that the landlord made their lives a “living hell,” with loud construction noise, drilling, dust and leaking water. They said they believe they were part of a campaign of targeted harassment by the Kushner Companies to get them to leave.

The company denies intentionally falsifying documents in an effort to harass tenants. In a news release Monday, the company called the investigation an effort to “create an issue where none exists.”

“If mistakes or typographical errors are identified, corrective action is taken immediately with no financial benefit to the company,” it said.

The company also said it contracted out the preparation of such documents to a third party and that the faulty paperwork was amended. 

Kushner stepped down as head of his family’s company before becoming presidential adviser. But the AP said he still has a financial stake in a number of properties.
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Colombia proposed on Monday that the International Monetary Fund provide assistance to help several hundred thousand Venezuelan refugees who have fled an economic and political crisis to  neighboring countries, officials at the G20 summit said.

The proposal was discussed at a meeting on Venezuela by leading finance ministers from the Western Hemisphere, the European Union and Japan, including U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

“The consensus is that the situation is extremely negative and we must by any means possible try to influence a solution to the problem and a change in Venezuela’s situation, mainly from the humanitarian point of view,” Brazilian Finance Minister Henrique Meirelles told reporters.

The fund, to be decided by the IMF next month, would only be used outside Venezuela and not by socialist President Nicolas Maduro’s “regime,” he said.

More than 500,000 Venezuelans have crossed into Colombia and 40,000 have left for Brazil as an economic meltdown worsened and opposition hopes of fair elections faded.

There were an estimated 886,000 Venezuelan migrants in South America in 2017, up from around 89,000 in 2015, the International Organization for Migration said in February.

An IMF spokesperson said of the proposal: “We look forward to subsequent discussions in which we would be involved.”

Mnuchin offered to host a follow-up meeting of the finance ministers on the margins of the World Bank/IMF Spring meeting in Washington, in April, a Treasury spokesperson said.

“The focus was on coordinating economic measures to achieve democratic political objectives in Venezuela, addressing the economic and humanitarian tragedy, and constructive responses once Venezuela allows free, fair and regular elections,” he said.

Colombia’s government was preparing a statement on the proposal, a finance ministry official said in Bogota.

The countries concerned with the Venezuelan situation also discussed sanctions and debt repayment as ways to encourage a solution to the crisis, Meirelles said.

“Some countries are already applying sanctions, like the United States. In the case of Brazil, we are owed $1.3 billion in trade financing and want that repaid,” he said. Venezuela recently paid arrears and is up to date, he added.

Other countries, led by Russia and China, favor a moratorium that would suspend Venezuela’s payments, he said. Russia and China did not attend the meeting.

Venezuela is undergoing a major economic crisis, with millions suffering food and medicine shortages, and Maduro’s government is late in paying about $1.9 billion in interest on its debt.
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Greenpeace says household brands including PepsiCo and Johnson & Johnson are refusing to disclose where they get their palm oil from despite vows to stop buying from companies that cut down tropical forests to grow the widely used commodity.

The environmental group said Monday that in January it asked 16 major brands to reveal their suppliers of palm oil, which is mainly grown in Indonesia and Malaysia and used in a slew of consumer products from snacks to cosmetics. It said eight disclosed the information and eight refused.

Greenpeace said that adds to concerns international consumer goods companies are “way off track” in meeting a 2010 commitment to remove deforestation-linked palm oil from their supply chains by 2020.

“Corporate commitments and polices have proliferated, but companies have largely failed to implement them,” it said.

Colgate-Palmolive, General Mills, Mars, Mondelez, Nestle, Procter & Gamble, Reckitt Benckiser and Unilever agreed to publicly disclose the mills that produce the palm oil they buy and the names of groups that control the mills. Ferrero, Hershey, Kellogg’s, Kraft Heinz, Johnson & Johnson, PepsiCo, PZ Cussons and Smucker refused to provide the information, according to Greenpeace.

Globally, four industries – palm oil, soya, logging and cattle rearing – are the biggest destroyers of the virgin forests that are a crucial buffer against the rise in global temperatures.

Indonesia, which has overtaken Brazil as the country cutting down its forests at the fastest rate, lost 24 million hectares of rainforest between 1990 and 2015, Greenpeace said citing government data.

“Alarmingly, the destruction of Indonesia’s rainforests for palm oil shows no signs of slowing down,” the group said.

Groups representing the palm oil industry in Indonesia and Malaysia contend that much of the opposition to palm oil is a protectionist effort by rival industries in Western nations.

They point to an initiative known as the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil as evidence they are taking conservation and other commitments seriously.

But Greenpeace said neither the industry initiative nor governments can be relied on to prevent palm oil producers from clearing forests.

“Palm oil traders, typically corporations that also have plantation interests, continue to allow oil from rainforest destroyers into their mills, refineries and distribution systems,” it said.
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Zimbabwe’s new leader has publicly named more than 1,800 companies and individuals accused of illegally stashing hundreds of millions of dollars overseas and not bringing the money home under a now-expired amnesty deal.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa has vowed to fight corruption after the dramatic resignation in November of longtime leader Robert Mugabe, whose government was accused of widespread mismanagement of the once-prosperous country.

Mnangagwa in December announced the amnesty deal, which expired Friday. He now says $591 million of the $1.2 billion suspected to be illegally stashed overseas has been returned.

The president says those on the list should “take heed of the importance of good corporate governance and the legal obligations of citizenry” or face prosecution.

His list shows China as the main destination for “funds externalized to foreign banks in cash or under spurious transactions.”

Four Zimbabwe state-owned diamond-mining firms are among those accused of moving the most money abroad in “illicit financial flows.” The four firms, which mined in fields that once courted controversy over alleged army killings of illegal artisanal miners and looting, are accused of failing to repatriate over $111 million in export proceeds.

Mugabe previously claimed the firms spirited out $15 billion from the diamond fields, where the Chinese were major players until Zimbabwe’s government cancelled all licenses to make way for a state monopoly in 2016.

Also Monday, a government gazette notice said the government has repealed sections of an indigenization law that limited foreign ownership of businesses to 49 percent, though diamonds and platinum are still reserved for majority ownership by the state. The move also had been promised by the new president.
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U.S. drinkers overtook Britons as the world’s biggest buyers of Champagne in 2017, after British purchases fell heavily for the second-straight year following the vote to leave the European Union, industry data showed.

Higher inflation since the Brexit referendum and slower wage growth have pinched the spending power of British consumers and left households more uncertain about their finances.

In volume terms, sales to Britons, long the biggest foreign buyers of French “bubbly,” fell 11 percent in 2017 after a nine percent drop in 2016, said France’s Champagne federation.

“The UK, still ranked second by value, continues to be adversely affected by the ‘Brexit’ effect,” the CIVC federation said in a statement.

Higher prices limited the damage. The federation said the value of Champagne sales to Britons fell 5.7 percent last year.

It was the first time the U.S. market has supplanted Britain as the biggest buyer of the sparkling wine, made in the Champagne region of northern France.

French sales remained stable in value terms at 2.1 billion euros, out of a world total of 4.9 billion euros in 2017, according to the latest figures, released Sunday.
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Indonesian president Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has instructed ministers to keep fuel prices stable over the next two years, said Energy Minister Ignasius Jonan, which would, in effect, continue a controversial fuel subsidy scheme that analysts say has negatively impacted growth and the environment. 

The Ministry said it would increase the per-liter subsidy for diesel and regular petrol from 500 Indonesian rupiah (about $0.35) to 700-1000 rupiah ($0.49-$0.70) while keeping pump prices unchanged.

The measure indicates how protectionist measures have been hard to shake for the initially reform-minded Jokowi, who made several inroads against subsidies in 2014 and 2015. 

Meanwhile, the rupiah continues to sink in the global market, due in part to Indonesia’s widening current-account deficit. On Monday, Credit Suisse said “the rupiah is among the most vulnerable emerging market currencies in Asia.”

Political Context

“Subsidizing fuel does tend to exacerbate currency depreciation, because the bulk of Indonesia’s petrol is imported,” said Kevin O’Rourke, a veteran Indonesian political analyst. “Fixed retail prices cause over-consumption, as the price remains the same even though the currency is declining; ordinarily, what should happen is that petrol prices rise as the currency declines, thereby discouraging consumption of the imports.”

In 2014, the year he was elected president, Jokowi raised fuel prices and capped the diesel subsidy within months of taking office. Last year he also pushed to phase out electricity subsidies, but was already facing pushback from consumers amid rising inflation. Consumer expectations are perhaps looming larger now that he is in the latter half of his term, and gearing up for a competitive reelection campaign in 2019. 

“Widodo hopes to keep retail prices stable through the April 2019 election, despite the gap between the Indonesia Crude Price (ICP) and the budget’s oil price assumption,” said O’Rourke. “Ostensibly, this subsidization aims to preserve consumer purchasing power; in reality, Widodo clearly hopes to avoid sacrificing popularity ahead of his re-election bid.” Ironically, he said, artificially low fuel prices end up creating inflation anyway, since people tend to then over-consume imported petrol, which further sinks the rupiah.

The subsidy may also imperil Indonesia’s public transport ambitions, said Jakarta-based energy policy researcher Lucky Lontoh. “Jokowi’s massive infrastructure development actually was started with a fuel subsidy reduction back in 2014, which freed some fiscal space needed to fund the infrastructure projects. More subsidies means the government will have less money to fund other development activities.” 

Environmental Impact

Fuel subsidies are considered a regressive form of spending because their benefits are captured by people wealthy enough to drive and own vehicles, said Paul Burke, an economist at Australian National University who focuses on energy and transportation. 

But they also aggravate traffic jams — including in cities like the notoriously traffic-choked Jakarta — air pollution, and oil dependence, said Burke, citing a recent paper he authored on the topic. 

Burke said Indonesia’s substantial progress on electricity subsidies are a hopeful sign and possible roadmap for fuel subsidy reform. 

“Over recent years, Indonesia has achieved substantial success in reducing electricity subsidies, by increasing some electricity tariffs to cost-reflective levels,” he said. “Poor households are among those that have been exempted from the reforms… [which] have made an important contribution to improving the efficiency of Indonesia’s electricity use. As electricity prices have increased, electricity use has shifted to a lower-growth trajectory. This has helped Indonesia to avoid the need to build too many expensive new power stations.”

In the fuel realm, Burke said a reform option that economists often suggest is a “fuel excise,” which is a tax on the sale of fuel and the opposite of a fuel subsidy. “Fuel excise would be a progressive form of revenue raising, would help to reduce pollution and traffic jams, and would help Indonesia reduce its budget deficit and fund key priorities.”

Fossil fuel subsidies have existed in Indonesia since its independence in 1949 and, per the International Energy Agency, accounted for nearly 20 percent of fiscal expenditure by the 1960’s. In that context, the reforms of modern-day Indonesia and the Jokowi administration are not inconsiderable: by 2014, about 3 percent of the GDP was spent on fossil fuel subsidies, and by 2016, after Jokowi’s initial spate of reforms, it was less than 1 percent. 

But, due to consumer expectations, the political climate, and the unique challenges of the fuel industry — Indonesia both has a lot of natural resources itself and a burgeoning consumer class — the current subsidy apparatus may prove sticky for the near future. 
…

When the Kushner Cos. bought three apartment buildings in a gentrifying neighborhood of Queens in 2015, most of the tenants were protected by special rules that prevent developers from pushing them out, raising rents and turning a tidy profit.

 

But that’s exactly what the company then run by Jared Kushner did, and with remarkable speed. Two years later, it sold all three buildings for $60 million, nearly 50 percent more than it paid.

Now a clue has emerged as to how President Donald Trump’s son-in-law’s firm was able to move so fast: The Kushner Cos. routinely filed false paperwork with the city declaring it had zero rent-regulated tenants in dozens of buildings it owned across the city when, in fact, it had hundreds.

 

While none of the documents during a three-year period when Kushner was CEO bore his personal signature, they provide a window into the ethics of the business empire he ran before he went on to become one of the most trusted advisers to the president of the United States.

 

“It’s bare-faced greed,” said Aaron Carr, founder of Housing Rights Initiative, a tenants’ rights watchdog that compiled the work permit application documents and shared them with The Associated Press. “The fact that the company was falsifying all these applications with the government shows a sordid attempt to avert accountability and get a rapid return on its investment.”

 

Kushner Cos. responded in a statement that it outsources the preparation of such documents to third parties that are reviewed by independent counsel, and “if mistakes or violations are identified, corrective action is taken immediately.”

 

“Kushner would never deny any tenant their due-process rights,” it said, adding that the company “has renovated thousands of apartments and developments with minimal complaints over the past 30 years.”

 

New York City Council members are calling for an investigation into the AP’s report.

 

For the three Queens buildings in the borough’s Astoria neighborhood, the Kushner Cos. checked a box on construction permit applications in 2015 that indicated the buildings had zero rent-regulated tenants. Tax records filed a few months later showed the company inherited as many as 94 rent-regulated units from the previous owner.

 

In all, Housing Rights Initiative found the Kushner Cos. filed at least 80 false applications for construction permits in 34 buildings across New York City from 2013 to 2016, all of them indicating there were no rent-regulated tenants. Instead, tax documents show there were more than 300 rent-regulated units. Nearly all the permit applications were signed by a Kushner employee, including sometimes the chief operating officer.

 

Had the Kushner Cos. disclosed those rent-regulated tenants, it could have triggered stricter oversight of construction crews by the city, including possibly unscheduled “sweeps” on site by inspectors to keep the company from harassing tenants and getting them to leave.

 

Instead, current and former tenants of the Queens buildings told the AP that they were subjected to extensive construction, with banging, drilling, dust and leaking water that they believe were part of targeted harassment to get them to leave and clear the way for higher-paying renters.

 

“It was noisy, there were complaints, I got mice,” said mailman Rudolph Romano, adding that he also bristled at a 60 percent rent increase, a hike the Kushner Cos. contends was initiated by the previous landlord. “They cleaned the place out. I watched the whole building leave.”

 

Tax records show those rent-regulated units that numbered as many as 94 when Kushner took over fell to 25 by 2016.

 

In Kushner buildings across the city, records show frequent complaints about construction going on early in the morning or late at night against the rules, improper or illegal construction, and work without a permit.

 

At a six-story walk-up in Manhattan’s East Village that was once home to the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, the Kushner Cos. filed an application to begin construction in late 2013 that, again, listed zero rent-regulated tenants. Tax records a few months later showed seven rent-regulated units.

 

“All of a sudden, there was drilling, drilling. … You heard the drilling in the middle of night,” said one of the rent-regulated tenants, Mary Ann Siwek, 67, who lives on Social Security payments and odd jobs. “There were rats coming in from the abandoned building next door. The hallways were always filled with lumber and sawdust and plaster.”

 

A knock on the door came a few weeks later, and an offer of at least $10,000 if she agreed to leave the building.

 

“I know it’s pretty horrible, but we can help you get out,” Siwek recalls the man saying. “We can offer you money.”

 

Siwek turned down the cash and sued instead. She said she won a year’s worth of free rent and a new refrigerator.

 

New York City Council member Ritchie Torres, who plans to launch an investigation into permit applications, said: “The Kushners appear to be engaging in what I call the weaponization of construction.”

 

Rent stabilization is a fixture of New York City that can bedevil developers seeking to make money off buildings. To free themselves of its restrictions, landlords usually have to wait until the rent rises above $2,733 a month, something that can take years given the small increases allowed each year.

 

Submitting false documents to the city’s Department of Buildings for construction permits is a misdemeanor, which can carry fines of up to $25,000. But real estate experts say it is often flouted with little to no consequences. Landlords who do so get off with no more than a demand from the city, sometimes a year or more later, to file an “amended” form with the correct numbers.

 

Housing Rights Initiative found the Kushner Cos. filed dozens of amended forms for the buildings mentioned in the documents, most of them a year to two later.

 

“There is a lack of tools to go after landlords who harass tenants, and there is a lack of enforcement,” said Seth Miller, a real estate lawyer who used to work at a state housing agency overseeing rent regulations. Until officials inspect every construction site, “you’re going to have this incentive for landlords to make life uncomfortable for tenants.”

 

New York City’s Department of Buildings did not comment in general about the false filings by the Kushner Cos., but said it disciplined a contractor who filed false documents while working on two of the Queens buildings, which are currently under investigation by a tenant-harassment task force. It added that the department is also ramping up its monitoring of construction, hiring 72 new inspectors under city laws recently passed to crack down on tenant harassment.

 

 “We won’t tolerate landlords who use construction to harass tenants — no matter who they are,” spokesman Joseph Soldevere said.

 

Exactly how much money the Kushner Cos. earned from the buildings mentioned in the documents is unclear. Of those 34 buildings, only the three in Queens and a fourth in Brooklyn appear to have been sold. The company also likely made money by reducing the number of rent-regulated tenants and bringing in those who would pay more.

 

Jared Kushner, who stepped down as CEO of the Kushner Cos. last year before taking on his advisory role at the White House, sold off part of his real estate holdings as required under government ethics rules. But he retained stakes in many properties, including Westminster Management, the Kushner Cos. subsidiary that oversees its residential properties. A financial disclosure last year showed he still owns a stake in Westminster and earned $1.6 million from the holding.

 

Back in Queens, the mailman Romano was one of the few rent-regulated tenants who fought back.

 

He hired a lawyer who found out he was protected from the 60-percent rent hike by law, something Romano did not know at the time. And he said his rent, which was set to increase to $3,750, was restored to $2,350.

 

Romano is still in the building where he has lived for nine years, with his wife, four children and his guests from the construction days — the mice.

 

 “I still haven’t gotten rid of them.”
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Air bags in some Hyundai and Kia cars failed to inflate in crashes and four people are dead. Now the U.S. government’s road safety agency wants to know why.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says it’s investigating problems that affect an estimated 425,000 cars made by the Korean automakers. The agency also is looking into whether the same problem could happen in vehicles made by other companies.

In documents posted on its website Saturday , the safety agency says the probe covers 2011 Hyundai Sonata midsize cars and 2012 and 2013 Kia Forte compacts. The agency says it has reports of six front-end crashes with significant damage to the cars. Four people died and six were injured.

Electrical circuits 

The problem has been traced to electrical circuit shorts in air bag control computers made by parts supplier ZF-TRW. NHTSA now wants to know if other automakers used the same computer.

On Feb. 27, Hyundai recalled nearly 155,000 Sonatas because of air bag failures, which the company blamed on the short circuits.Hyundai’s sister automaker Kia, which sells similar vehicles, has yet to issue a recall.

In a statement Saturday, Kia said that it has not confirmed any air bag non-deployments in its 2002-2013 Kia Forte models arising from “the potential chip issue.” The company said it will work with NHTSA investigators.

“Kia will act promptly to conduct a safety recall, if it determines that a recall would be appropriate,” the company said.

But a consumer complaint cited in NHTSA’s investigation documents said Kia was informed of a crash near Oakland in which air bags failed to deploy and a passenger was killed.

In October 2015, the complainant told NHTSA that a 2012 Forte was involved in a serious front-end crash that occurred in July 2013. A passenger was killed and the driver was injured. According to the complaint, Kia was notified, the air bag computer was tested and it was “found not to be working.”

Kia spokesman James Bell said he could not comment beyond the company’s statement.

Hyundai recall

In addition, no deaths or injuries were disclosed in Hyundai’s recall documents, which were posted by NHTSA in early March.

Hyundai spokesman Jim Trainor says the problem occurred in rare high-speed head-on collisions that were offset from the center of the vehicles. “It’s very unusual to have that kind of collision,” he said Saturday.

Dealers will consider offering loaner cars to owners until the problem can be repaired, he said. “We certainly would do everything we can to help our customers,” Trainor said.

Hyundai said in a statement that the air bag control circuitry was damaged in three crashes and a fourth crash is under investigation.

ZF-TRW said in a statement that it is prevented by confidentiality agreements from identifying other automakers that bought its air bag control computers. The company said it is working with customers and supports the NHTSA investigation.

According to NHTSA, Hyundai investigated and found the problem was “electrical overstress” in the computers. The company didn’t have a fix developed at the time but said it was investigating the problem with ZF-TRW. Hyundai does not yet have a fix for the problem but said it expects the Sonata recall to start April 20. The problem also can stop the seat belts from tightening before a crash.

In the documents, NHTSA said it understands that the Kia Fortes under investigation use similar air bag control computers made by ZF-TRW. The agency noted a 2016 recall involving more than 1.4 million Fiat Chrysler cars and SUVs that had a similar problem causing the air bags not to deploy. Agency documents show those vehicles had air bag computers made by ZF-TRW.
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The pot revolution is alive and well in the state of Colorado where recreational cannabis has been legal since 2014. While the full impact of legal marijuana in Colorado has yet to be determined, what is clear is that cannabis has become a giant moneymaker for the state. And as Paula Vargas reports from Denver, women entrepreneurs — weed warriors, as some have called them — are leading the way.
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Britain should consider a limited extension to its exit process from the European Union if needed to ensure details of its future relationship with the

bloc are agreed, a committee of lawmakers said in a report.

Prime Minister Theresa May formally notified the EU of Britain’s intention to leave by triggering Article 50 of the membership treaty on March 29, 2017, setting the clock ticking on a two-year exit process.

Britain has said it wants to have the basis of a trade deal set out with the EU by October, but the Exiting the EU Committee said in a report published Sunday that deadline would be tight.

“In the short time that remains, it is difficult to see how it will be possible to negotiate a full, bespoke trade and market access agreement, along with a range of other agreements, including on foreign affairs and defense cooperation,” the committee said.

“If substantial aspects of the future partnership remain to be agreed in October, the government should seek a limited extension to the Article 50 time to ensure that a political declaration on the future partnership that is sufficiently detailed and comprehensive can be concluded.”

The report also said it should be possible to prolong, if necessary, the length of any post-Brexit transition that’s agreed upon by Britain and the EU.

Britain has said it is confident it can reach a deal on the transition period at an EU summit this month. It expects the transition to last around two years after its departure date, although the European Union has said it should be shorter,

ending on Dec. 31, 2020.

The Exiting the EU committee, made up of lawmakers from all the main political parties, also called on the government to present a detailed plan on how a “frictionless” border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland would work.

The Irish border is a key sticking point in negotiations between the U.K. and the EU, as Britain has said it wants to leave the customs union but does not want a “hard” land border with customs checks.
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Chinese President Xi Jinping on Saturday discussed overcapacity in world steel markets and agreed to work on

solutions within the framework of the Group of 20 industrialized nations, Merkel’s spokesman said.

The two leaders emphasized close ties between the two countries, which are both facing planned U.S. steel and aluminum tariffs, and agreed to deepen the strategic partnership between them, Steffen Seibert said in a statement.

He said Merkel invited Chinese officials to visit Berlin for consultations, and Xi invited Merkel to visit China.

They also discussed the situation in North Korea regarding its nuclear and missile development efforts.
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