Around 16,000 nurses in Zimbabwe resumed work Monday, bringing to an end one week of strikes that affected health services in the country.

Zimbabwe’s health ministry said the situation had “returned to normal” in all hospitals.

“The majority of nurses dismissed have applied for re-engagement, and the government has permitted them to resume duty, pending final approval from the employer,” the health ministry public relations office in Harare said Monday.

Strike lasts week

The nurses went on strike a week ago to press demands for improved allowances and an irregular salary grading system, its union said.

Many of Zimbabwe’s nurses operate in poorly equipped state-run institutions, and patients are expected to supply basics such as drugs and equipment.

Since taking charge of Zimbabwe late last year, President Emmerson Mnangagwa has vowed to improve the beleaguered economy and seek foreign investment to improve public services.

Nurses offer free treatment

The nurses were fired last week by Vice President Constantino Chiwenga, who said they refused to go back to work after $17 million was released to improve their pay.

Hundreds of the nurses offered free treatment to the public in the country’s parliament to protest their dismissal Friday.

Zimbabwe’s government said at the time that the decision would not be reversed and ordered heads of hospitals to recruit new nurses to replace those who were sacked.
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Chinese ride-hailing firm Didi Chuxing on Monday began offering its service in the Mexican city of Toluca, the company said, setting up a potentially costly battle with rival Uber Technologies in a key Latin American market.

The Mexican launch marks the first time Didi has brought its own app-based ride service outside of Asia, a critical global expansion that comes as the company faces increased competition at home from internet giant Meituan-Dianping, which recently launched its own ride-hailing service.

Didi Express has launched in the capital city of the State of Mexico, an urban hub about 40 miles (60 km) west of Mexico City, adding a number of new safety features for drivers and riders.

Reuters was first to report Didi’s plans for Toluca earlier this month.

In Mexico, Didi will go up against Uber, its chief international rival, for the first time since Uber’s launch in China that ended with a merger of the two companies’ operations in 2016. Uber is the ride-hailing leader in Mexico, where it has 7 million users in more than three dozen cities.

Didi, which has an operations hub in the Juarez neighborhood in Mexico City, said it hopes to bring its ride-hailing service to other major Mexican cities later this year.

Didi said teams in Mexico, Beijing and California studied the Mexican market to adapt Didi’s algorithms and other ride-service technologies for the local market, addressing issues such as crime.

Didi is bringing to Mexico a number of new safety features, including an emergency alert button in the app that will connect drivers and passengers with police and other emergency contacts if they find themselves in danger, a safety monitoring system and a way for passengers to share their ride itinerary.

The company started recruiting drivers early this month, promising not to take any piece of their fares until June 17.

After mid-June, Didi plans to take a 20 percent cut, below Uber’s 25 percent commission, Reuters previously reported.

Didi late last year bought Brazilian ride-hailing firm 99, giving the company its first toehold in Latin America.
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Two Chevron Corp. employees detained in Venezuela last week could be charged with treason for refusing to sign a parts contract for a joint venture with state-owned oil company PDVSA, according to two sources familiar with draft charges against the U.S. firm’s executives.

The arrests, by national intelligence agents, marked the first at a Western oil firm in Venezuela and represent a dramatic escalation of growing tensions between PDVSA and foreign companies over control of supply contracts, the sources told Reuters.

The widening dispute could worsen operational chaos that has caused the OPEC nation’s oil output to plunge by 23 percent, or 450,000 barrels per day, since October.

“These detentions are going to accelerate the operational crisis,” another source with knowledge of Chevron’s operations told Reuters. “Procurement could end up in paralysis if nobody wants to take the risk of signing or authorizing anything.”

The draft treason charges – seen by Chevron lawyers last week, the two sources said – raised concern that the oil major could get caught in the crossfire between Washington and Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who accuses the U.S. government of sabotaging the economy to topple his administration. The United States has imposed sanctions on senior members of Maduro’s government and PDVSA.

The two Chevron employees were jailed when they refused to sign a supply contract written by PDVSA executives under an emergency decree – which skips the competitive bidding process, according to a half dozen sources close to the case. Such decrees have been cited by Venezuela prosecutors as a means of extracting bribes in some recent PDVSA corruption cases.

The Chevron employees balked when the parts were listed at more than double their market price in a contract worth several million dollars, one of the sources told Reuters. The workers oversaw operations and procurement at Petropiar, an oil upgrading project co-owned by PDVSA and Chevron to transform Orinoco Belt’s extra heavy crude into an exportable product.

Venezuela’s national intelligence service, Sebin, arrested the Chevron workers, Carlos Algarra and Rene Vasquez, in front of stunned co-workers in a raid of Chevron’s office in Puerto La Cruz and the upgrader on April 16.

Venezuelan authorities have yet to comment on the arrest of the men, both Venezuelans, and no charges against them have been made public.

The Venezuela public prosecutor’s office declined to comment, and PDVSA did not respond to several requests for comment.

The arrests follow a purge that has seen more than 80 executives at PDVSA and its suppliers jailed for alleged corruption as the state firm’s new chief, Major General Manuel Quevedo, has sought to stamp his authority on the sector – the financial lifeblood of Venezuela’s unraveling socialist government.

Tensions between PDVSA and foreign oil companies have steadily risen since Quevedo took charge in November and appointed military officers who had little or no oil industry experience to senior jobs.

Foreign firms have pushed for a greater say in procurement to combat inefficiencies and graft, oil industry sources said, but disputes over governance standards have caused operational delays, raising tensions over Venezuela’s falling oil output.

In February, the Petropiar upgrader had been temporarily halted because of problems scheduling its exports, and PDVSA executives were concerned it could be forced to stop again due to lack of spare parts, one of the sources said.

When the imported furnace parts did not arrive on time, PDVSA executives blamed the Chevron employees for the delays, according to the two sources familiar with the draft charges.

The men are being represented by Chevron lawyers. The charges against them have not been formalized and could change, the two sources said.

A spokesman for Chevron declined to comment.

Venezuela defines treason as conspiring with foreign enemies against the state and proscribes punishment of up to 30 years in prison. Defendants are not entitled to due process protections afforded to those accused of other crimes, according to the statute.

As of Sunday, the two men were being held in the offices of the intelligence services in the coastal city of Barcelona, according to the two sources with knowledge of the draft charges.

Caught in the Crossfire

The detentions highlight the growing difficulties for foreign oil firms amid a deepening economic crisis in Venezuela, allegations of rampant corruption, a power struggle within PDVSA and an increasingly authoritarian government.

Reuters reported earlier this month that Maduro had granted extra powers to Quevedo to “create, annul or modify” deals involving state energy company PDVSA and its subsidiaries.

Foreign oil firms, at a meeting in Caracas this month to discuss how to tackle production problems at joint ventures, expressed their concerns over procurement and governance to Quevedo, according to documents seen by Reuters.

PDVSA has a minimum 60 percent stake in joint ventures and has been slow to share operational control, despite large-scale staff resignations in recent months.

About 25,000 PDVSA workers resigned between the start of January 2017 and the end of January 2018, out of a workforce last officially reported at 146,000, Reuters reported last week.

The resignations – including high-level professionals that are now almost impossible to replace – have only accelerated since Quevedo arrived, two dozen industry sources told Reuters.

Oil majors such as Chevron and Eni SpA, Total SA and Repsol SA still operate in Venezuela, home to the world’s largest oil reserves. Although no foreign workers have been detained in the purge of the sector until last week, some companies have previously withdrawn expatriate workers over security concerns.

Many foreign workers’ families are reluctant to stay in Venezuela for long periods, one executive from a company operating in the Orinoco Belt told Reuters.

“We no longer have any guarantee that expatriates will not be sent to jail,” the executive said.
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The European Union asked on Monday to join a dispute brought by China to the World Trade Organization over U.S. import tariffs on steel and aluminum, just over a week before U.S. President Trump decides whether they should apply to Europe.

The U.S. administration has set duties of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum on grounds of national security, but provided a temporary exemption until May 1 for the European Union.

China has taken the United States to the WTO over the measures. The first step in the WTO process involves consultations.

The WTO said on Monday that the European Union had made a formal request to join the consultations as a party with a significant trade interest in the matter.

The EU noted, according to the WTO, that its interest was substantial because if the exemption ended then the U.S. measures would hit EU exports.

Hong Kong, India, Russia and Thailand have all filed requests to join the consultations. The EU is the first of the parties granted an exemption to seek to join the dispute.

Canada, Mexico, Australia, Argentina, Brazil and South Korea also received temporary exemptions. South Korea’s has since been extended indefinitely.

The European Commission, which coordinates trade policy for the 28-member EU, said that the bloc wanted to be granted a permanent exemption without conditions.

Separately on Monday, India, Russia, Norway, Singapore, Switzerland, Turkey and Venezuela joined China in expressing their concerns or disappointment at the U.S. metals tariffs.

A European Commission source said it was normal for the EU to seek to observe consultations and be able to submit its own views if it had a substantial interest and considered the WTO as the appropriate forum to settle disputes.
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The Mexican unit of Brazilian construction firm Odebrecht said on Monday it will fight the sanctions announced last week by the Mexican government, dismissing them as unfair and unjustified.

Mexico banned federal institutions and state governments from doing business with Odebrecht for 2-1/2 years and fined two units of the companies around $30 million each.

The government did not detail what was behind the decisions, but officials said they were related to probes into suspected corruption between the firm and Mexican state oil company Pemex.

In an open letter in the Mexican newspaper Excelsior, Odebrecht Mexico said the sanctions imposed were “completely unfounded and unfair” and it would fight them “with all legal means.”

Odebrecht has spent the past few years at the center of one of the largest corruption scandals in Latin America, and has admitted paying bribes from Peru to Panama and Mexico.
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Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced Sunday he is giving $4.5 million to the United Nations Climate Change Secretariat to cover a U.S. government funding gap for the international Paris climate accord.

Bloomberg’s charitable foundation said the money will support work developing countries are doing to achieve their targets under the agreement as well as “promoting climate action” among cities and businesses.

The 2015 treaty signed by more than 200 nations and entities vowed to curb carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions in order to try to limit global temperature rise.

Former President Barack Obama’s administration was among the signatories, but President Donald Trump said he would pull out of the agreement. Trump campaigned as a booster of fossil fuels and a skeptic of climate change science, and said the Paris accord would cause U.S. businesses to lose millions of jobs.

“This agreement is less about the climate and more about other countries gaining a financial advantage over the United States,” Trump said last year.

Bloomberg made a similar payment last year and pledged to continue the contributions. He told CBS News in an interview broadcast Sunday that Trump is capable of changing his position.

“But he should change his mind and say, look, there really is a problem here, America is part of the problem, America is a big part of the solution, and we should go in and help the world stop a potential disaster,” Bloomberg said.

The United States is among the world’s top emitters of carbon dioxide.

But in late March, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that because of the actions of businesses and local authorities, the U.S. “might be able to meet the commitments made in Paris as a country.” 

Guterres appointed Bloomberg as his special envoy for climate action in March. Guterres tweeted Sunday thanking Bloomberg “for his generous support to the United Nations but also for his global leadership on climate action.”

Last year was the third warmest year on record. Scientists increasingly see evidence of climate change in heat waves, storms and other extreme weather.
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The World Bank’s shareholders on Saturday endorsed a $13 billion paid-in capital increase that will boost China’s shareholding but bring lending reforms that will raise borrowing costs for higher-middle-income countries, including China.

The multilateral lender said the plan would allow it to lift the group’s overall lending to nearly $80 billion in fiscal 2019 from about $59 billion last year and to an average of about $100 billion annually through 2030.

“We have more than doubled the capacity of the World Bank Group,” the institution’s president, Jim Yong Kim, told reporters during the International Monetary Fund and World Bank spring meetings in Washington. “It’s a huge vote of confidence, but the expectations are enormous.”

The hard-fought capital hike, initially resisted by the Trump administration, will add $7.5 billion paid-in capital for the World Bank’s main concessional lending arm, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

Its commercial-terms lender, the International Finance Corp, will get $5.5 billion paid-in capital, and IBRD also will get a $52.6 billion increase in callable capital.

Lending rules

The bank agreed to change IBRD’s lending rules to charge higher rates for developing countries with higher incomes, to discourage them from excessive borrowing.

IBRD previously had charged similar rates for all borrowers, and U.S. Treasury officials had complained that it was lending too much to China and other bigger emerging markets.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said earlier Saturday that he supported the capital hike because of the reforms that it included. The last World Bank capital increase came in 2010.

Cost controls

The current hike comes with cost controls and salary restrictions that will hold World Bank compensation to “a little below average” for the financial sector, Kim said.

He added that there was nothing specific in the agreement that targeted a China lending reduction, but he said lending to China was expected to gradually decline.

In 2015, China founded the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and lends heavily to developing countries through its government export banks.

The agreement will lift China’s shareholding in IBRD to 6.01 percent from 4.68 percent, while the U.S. share would dip slightly to 16.77 percent from 16.89 percent. Washington will still keep its veto power over IBRD and IFC decisions.

Kim said the increase was expected to become fully effective by the time the World Bank’s new fiscal year starts July 1. Countries will have up to eight years to pay for the capital increase.

The U.S. contribution is subject to approval by Congress.
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The European Union and Mexico reached an agreement Saturday on a new free trade deal, a coup for both parties in the face of increased protectionism from the United States under President Donald Trump.

Since its plans for a trade alliance with the United States were frozen after Trump’s election victory, the EU has focused instead on trying to champion open markets and seal accords with other like-minded countries.

The agreement in principle with Mexico follows a deal struck last year with Japan and comes ahead of talks next week with the Mercosur bloc of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.

“With this agreement, Mexico joins Canada, Japan and Singapore in the growing list of partners willing to work with the EU in defending open, fair and rules-based trade,” said European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.

For Mexico, a deal with the EU is part of a strategy to reduce its reliance on the United States, the destination of 80 percent of its exports. That has become more urgent, given Trump’s push to rewrite the North American Free Trade Agreement.

The EU and Mexico wanted to update a trade deal agreed to 21 years ago that largely covers industrial goods. The new deal adds farm products, more services, investment and government procurement, and include provisions on labor and environmental standards and fighting corruption.

The European Commission said that, under the deal struck Saturday, practically all trade in goods with Mexico will be duty-free, including for farm products such as Mexican chicken and asparagus and European dairy produce.

The deal will for example cut Mexican tariffs of up to 20 percent on cheeses such as gorgonzola and increase EU pork exports, the Commission said. 

It will also allow Mexican companies to bid for government contracts in Europe and EU companies for those in Mexico, including at the state level.

Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo said both sides had achieved a major update of their original accord.

“It needed to be more ambitious in the agricultural sector, it needed to be more ambitious in services, it needed to be more ambitious in many of the elements that in the end we managed to agree on after two years of work,” he said.

Guajardo said the deal would grant his country better access for products including orange juice, tuna, asparagus, honey, egg white albumin, as well as “equitable access” for meat products.

It is also set to recognize “geographical indications” for certain food and drink, a key EU demand.

Such indications protect agricultural produce, for example, dictating that the term “champagne” can only be used for sparkling wine from northern France.

It was not clear, however, how the divisive issue of “manchego” cheese had been settled. The EU says the term should only apply to sheep’s milk cheese from central Spain, but Mexico has its own “manchego” made from cow’s milk.

Negotiators from both sides will continue to work on technical details to produce a final text by the end of the year.
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The International Monetary Fund’s policymaking committee said Saturday that a strong world economy was threatened by increasing tension over trade and countries’ heavy debt burden. Longer-term prospects are clouded, it said, by sluggish growth in productivity and aging populations in wealthy nations.

In a statement at the end of three days of meetings, the lending agency urged countries to take advantage of the broadest-based economic expansion in a decade to cut government debt and to enact reforms that will make their economies more efficient.

The IMF expects the world economy to grow 3.9 percent this year and next, which would be the strongest since 2011. But an intensifying dispute between the U.S. and China over Beijing’s aggressive attempt to challenge U.S. technological dominance has raised the prospect of a trade war that could drag down worldwide growth.

“Trade tensions are not to the benefit of anyone,” said Lesetja Kganyago, who leads the policymaking committee and is governor of the South African Reserve Bank.

The U.S. has resisted pressure to back off President Donald Trump’s protectionist “America First” trade policies.

Treasury Steven Mnuchin urged the IMF to do more to address what the Trump administration says are unfair trade practices and called on the World Bank to steer cheap loans away from China and toward poorer countries.

Unfair trade policies “impede stronger U.S. and global growth, acting as a persistent drag on the global economy,” Mnuchin said.

He appealed for the IMF to go beyond its traditional role as an emergency lender for countries in financial distress and said it should more closely monitor the practices of countries that persistently run large trade surpluses.

“The IMF must step up to the plate on this issue, providing a more robust voice,” Mnuchin said. “We urge the IMF to speak out more forcefully on the issue of external imbalances.”

The World Bank, he said, must not back away from shifting its lending from fast-growing developing countries such as China to poorer nations. In a speech prepared for the bank’s policy committee, Mnuchin urged the bank to aim its resources at “poorer borrowers and away from countries better able to finance their own development objectives.”

Many have used the finance meetings to protest Trump’s protectionist trade policies, which mark a reversal of seven decades of U.S. support for ever-freer global commerce.

“We strongly reject moves toward protectionism and away from the rules-based international trade order,” said Már Guðmundsson, governor of the Central Bank of Iceland. “Unilateral trade restrictions will only inflict harm on the global economy.”

While finance officials struggled to find common ground with Washington on trade, they agreed on the importance of coordinating other policies in an effort to sustain the strongest global economic expansion since the 2008 financial crisis.

“We have to keep this group working together,” said Nicolas Dujovne, Argentina’s treasury minister.

In addition to wrangling over trade, finance officials from the Group of 20 powerful economies focused on geopolitical risks and rising interest rates, two threats to growth. Dujovne, whose country is chairing the G-20 this year, met with reporters Friday to summarize talks held as a prelude to the IMF-World Bank meetings.

The U.S. has rattled financial markets with a series of provocative moves in recent weeks.

Last month, it imposed taxes on imported steel and aluminum, and later proposed tariffs on $50 billion in Chinese products as a punishment for Beijing’s aggressive efforts to obtain U.S. technology. China countered by targeting $50 billion in U.S. exports. Trump then ordered his trade representative to go after up to $100 billion more in Chinese products.

Finance leaders repeatedly sounded warnings about a potential trade war.

“The larger threat is posed by increasing trade tensions and the possibility that we enter a sequence of unilateral, tit-for-tat measures, all of which generate uncertainties for global trade and GDP growth,” Roberto Azevêdo, director-general of the World Trade Organization, told the IMF’s policy committee.

French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said the steel and aluminum tariffs could lead to retaliation by other countries and “a significant risk that the situation could escalate.” He said “tensions between the U.S. and China have taken a worrying turn.”
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U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Saturday that he was contemplating a visit to China for discussions on issues that have global leaders concerned about a potentially damaging trade war.

“I am not going to make any comment on timing, nor do I have anything confirmed, but a trip is under consideration,” Mnuchin said at a Washington news conference during the International Monetary Fund and World Bank spring meetings.

Mnuchin said he discussed the possible trip and potential trade opportunities with the new head of China’s central bank.

Tensions have escalated between the U.S. and China over Beijing’s attempts to challenge America’s technological prowess, raising the prospects of a trade war that could hinder global economic growth. 

Mnuchin said he had spoken with a number of his counterparts who have been forced to deal with U.S. President Donald Trump’s “America First” trade policies, including U.S. tariffs on foreign aluminum and steel and on up to $150 million in Chinese goods. Some of the leaders, he said, were focused on exemptions from the tariffs.

He said he emphasized that the U.S. was not trying to construct protectionist trade barriers with the tariffs. Instead, he said, “we are looking for reciprocal treatment.”

Mnuchin also said he wanted the IMF to do more to address what the Trump administration believes are unfair trade practices. He also called on the World Bank to redirect low-interest loans from China to more impoverished countries. 
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China has strongly refuted suggestions its multibillion-dollar economic corridor now under construction with Pakistan has “hidden” military designs as well.  

Beijing has pledged to invest about $63 billion in Pakistan by 2030 to develop ports, highways, motorways, railways, airports, power plants and other infrastructure in the neighboring country, traditionally a strong ally.

The Chinese have also expanded and operationalized the Pakistani deep water port of Gwadar on the Arabian Sea, which is at the heart of the massive bilateral cooperation, known as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, or CPEC. The strategically located port is currently being operated by a Chinese state-run company .

China has positioned CPEC as the flagship project of its $1-trillion global Belt and Road Initiative, or BRI, championed by President Xi Jinping.

“I want to make it very clear, BRI initiative and with CPEC under it, it’s purely a commercial development project. We don’t have any kind of military or strategic design for that,” said Yao Jing, Chinese ambassador to Islamabad. He made the remarks in an exclusive interview with VOA.

Within five years of finalizing and launching CPEC, Jing said that 22 “early harvest” projects out of the 43 total projects under CPEC have been completed or are under construction, with a total investment of around $19 billion, the largest influx of foreign investment in Pakistan’s 70-year-old history. The projects have already brought 60,000 local jobs and effectively addressed the country’s once crippling energy crisis.

Power plants built under the joint venture, officials say, will have added more than 10,000 megawatts of electricity to the national grid by June, leading to a surplus of power.

While speaking to VOA, the Chinese diplomat urged the United States and India to “come to the CPEC project” and “witness the progress on the ground” for themselves, saying it will enable them overcome misunderstandings vis-a-vis CPEC.

“There are some kind of doubts that may be there are some things hidden in it. I think that when you have an objective lens to look at this project and to come to the ground to find this progress on the ground then you may have a better understanding of what we are doing here,” said Jing.

The Chinese envoy was responding to concerns expressed in Washington and New Delhi that Beijing could try to turn Gwadar into a military port in the future to try to dominate the Indian Ocean.

Jing explained that a state-to-state defense-related cooperation has for decades existed between the two allied nations and China through “normal channels” is determined to contribute to “military and strategic ability’ of Pakistan.

“We don’t want to make the CPEC as such a kind of platform,” the ambassador emphasized.

However, he added, it is “natural and understandable” that the project’s massive size and design has raised doubts and suspicions” about its aims.   

The skepticism about Chinese intentions stems from, among other things, a massive airport being built in Gwadar, with a landing strip of 12-kilometers. China has given nearly $300 million to Pakistan for the construction of the airport.

“Basically, it is for China and Pakistan to make this project a successful economic project, then we can make it clear our intention here,” Jing said.

India is also opposed to CPEC because a portion of the project is located on territory that is claimed by both New Delhi and Islamabad. But Pakistan and China both dismiss the objections as politically-motivated.

CPEC aims to link the landlocked western Chinese region of Xinjiang to Gwadar, allowing ships carrying China’s oil imports and other goods from the Persian Gulf to use a much shorter and secure route and avoid the existing troubled route through the Strait of Malacca.

There are currently up to 10,000 Chinese nationals working on CPEC-related projects in Pakistan. Ambassador Jing said that 21 new mega-projects, including the establishment of Special Economic Zones across the country, are ready to be launched in the next stage with particular emphasis on encouraging private engagement.

In the next five to seven years, officials estimate, CPEC will have created employment for half-a-million Pakistanis. The country’s troubled economy, lately impacted by insecurity and energy crisis, has grown 5.4 percent in the previous financial year, the fastest rate in a decade, and officials forecast the expected growth in the year ending June 2018 will be six percent.

Pakistan’s deepening cooperation with China comes as the country’s diplomatic relations with the U.S. continue to deteriorate. Washington complains that Islamabad is not doing enough to eliminate terrorist groups using the country’s soil for attacks against neighboring countries, including Afghanistan.

While U.S. economic assistance has significantly reduced in recent years, the Trump administration also suspended military assistance to Pakistan in January and linked its restoration to decisive actions against terrorist groups.

Pakistan strongly rejects the allegations and says it is being scapegoated for the U.S.-led coalition’s failures in ending the war in Afghanistan. .

China is also worried about the spread of regional terrorism in the wake of a low-level Muslim separatist insurgency in its troubled Xinjiang border region. But Beijing has steadfastly supported Islamabad’s counterterrorism efforts and dismisses U.S. criticism of them.

China’s arms exports to Pakistan have in recent years exponentially increased while exports of military hardware from the country’s traditionally largest supplier, the U.S., have reportedly declined to just $21-million in 2017 from $1-billion.

“China will never leave Pakistan. I shall say we have confidence in the future of Pakistan,” said Chinese Ambassador Jing, when asked whether terrorism-related concerns might also push Beijing away from Islamabad.

China’s investment under CPEC has also encouraged hundreds of private Chinese companies and thousands of Chinese nationals to arrive in Pakistan to look for business opportunities and buy property. The influx of the foreigners has raised alarms among local businesses and sparked worries that the Chinese labor force will take away local jobs.

Jing stressed that China and Pakistan are working together to promote mutual people-to-people connectivity through enhanced education and cultural linkages to improve mutual understanding.

Ambassador Jing says there are eight Chinese universities working to promote Pakistan’s official Urdu language while 12 Pakistan-study centers are working to promote mutual understanding between the two countries. There are 22,000 Pakistanis seeking education in China.

Pakistani officials say currently, about 25,000 students are learning Chinese language in 19 universities and four Confucius Institutes affiliated with the Chinese Ministry of Education.
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The European Union needs to be exempted from steel and aluminum tariffs announced by the United States in order to work with Washington on trade with China, France’s Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said Friday.

“We are close allies between the EU and the United States. We cannot live with full confidence with the risk of being hit by those measures and by those new tariffs. We cannot live with a kind of sword of Damocles hanging over our heads,” Le Maire told a press conference during the International Monetary Fund and World Bank spring meetings. 

“If we want to move forward … if we want to address the issue of trade, an issue of the new relationship with China, because we both want to engage China in a new multilateral order, we must first of all get rid of that threat,” he said.

U.S. President Donald Trump announced a 25 percent tariff on steel imports and 10 percent tariff on aluminum imports last month to counter what he has described as unfair international competition.

Le Maire said the EU’s exemption from the tariffs should be “full and permanent.”

The EU is seeking compensation from the United States for the tariffs through the World Trade Organization. Brussels has called for consultations with Washington as soon as possible and is drawing up a list of duties to be slapped on U.S. products.
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