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The world’s financial leaders rejected protectionism Tuesday and urged “further dialogue” on trade, but failed to blunt the threat of a trade war days before U.S. metals tariffs take effect and Washington is to announce measures against China.

Finance ministers and central bankers of the world’s 20 biggest economies, which represent 75 percent of world trade and 85 percent of global gross domestic product, discussed trade disruptions as a risk to growth at a two-day meeting.

But after talks described by participants as “polite” and mainly consisting of read-out statements with no debate, the Group of 20 agreed only to stand by an ambiguous declaration on trade from 2017 and “recognize” the need for more “dialogue and actions.”

“We reaffirm the conclusions of our leaders on trade at the Hamburg Summit and recognize the need for further dialogue and actions. We are working to strengthen contribution of trade to our economies,” the G-20 ministers’ final statement said.

But the declaration did little to dispel concern about a global trade war as the U.S. tariffs of 25 percent on imported steel and 10 percent on aluminum take effect Friday.

Tariffs on Chinese products

Two officials briefed on the matter said U.S. President Donald Trump would also unveil tariffs on up to $60 billion in Chinese technology and telecoms products by Friday, a move stemming from Beijing’s intellectual property practices.

The 2017 Hamburg declaration, which the financial leaders referred to on Tuesday, said G-20 countries would “continue to fight protectionism, including all unfair trade practices.”

But it also said G-20 leaders “recognize the role of legitimate trade defense instruments,” an ambiguity that provides the United States with a way to argue its cause on the tariffs.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin made clear Washington’s tariff action was such a legitimate defense.

“We need to be prepared to act in the U.S. interest, again, to defend free and fair, reciprocal trade,” he said in a news conference after the talks, adding that there was always a risk that others would reciprocate.

“There’s a risk of a trade war. The president has said we’re not afraid of getting into a trade war, given the size of our market, the size of our economy, and the fact that we have a big trade deficit,” Mnuchin said.

“On the steel and aluminum issue, this is a result of unfair trade practices and that’s why we’ve responded that way.”

Canadian Finance Minister Bill Morneau, comparing this G-20 meeting to the one in Germany last year, when Mnuchin demanded a rewrite of the long=standing communique language on trade, said the rest of the world now has a better sense of the U.S. view on how the rules of trade should be reworked.

“There’s not a consensus. Everyone around the table doesn’t have the same point of view, but there’s a greater understanding of what it is they’re trying to achieve,” Morneau said.

Europe ready to retaliate

The European Union, the biggest U.S. trading partner, wants to be exempt from the metals tariffs like Canada and Mexico, but so far has not had any success in securing an exemption.

As a result, the EU is preparing retaliatory tariffs on U.S. products such as bourbon, jeans and Harley-Davidson motorcycles.

European officials said that a trade war would produce only losers and that the G-20 ministers were united in support of “multilateralism” — G-20 jargon for solving disputes through negotiations in the World Trade Organization.

“We all agreed trade wars are a negative sum game,” Bank of Italy Governor Ignazio Visco told reporters on the sidelines of the meeting. “There hasn’t been any voice against rule-based multilateralism.”

French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire stressed Europe expected to get exemptions from the U.S. tariffs without any conditions and warned protectionism would hurt world growth.

Jeopardy to recovery

“It is of the utmost importance to avoid any unilateral choice that might jeopardize our growth. Unfair trade conditions [and] protectionism might jeopardize the economic recovery all over the world,” he said.

Mnuchin said he’d had very direct conversations with his counterparts in China and that he looked forward to working with Liu He, China’s newly installed, Harvard-educated vice premier in charge of financial and industrial policy, on getting better access to the Chinese market.

“I think there’s a general view among the G-20 that it is our desire to see China open their markets so that we can participate in their markets the way they participate in ours in a much more … reciprocal … relationship,” Mnuchin said.

The G-20 also called for continued international monitoring of cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and the risks they posed. It said these assets raised issues with consumer and investor protections, market integrity, money laundering and terrorist financing.
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President Donald Trump will reap a huge budget increase for the military while Democrats cement wins on infrastructure and other domestic programs that they failed to get under President Barack Obama if lawmakers can agree on a $1.3 trillion governmentwide spending bill before a deadline this week. 

Battles over budget priorities in the huge bill were essentially settled Tuesday, but a scaled-back plan for Trump’s border wall and a fight over a tunnel under the Hudson River still held up a final agreement. 

Republican leaders were hopeful a deal could be announced as early as Tuesday evening, allowing for a House vote Thursday. If a bill doesn’t pass Congress by midnight Friday, the government will shut down for a third time this year. 

The measure on the table would provide major funding increases for the Pentagon — $80 billion over current limits — bringing the military budget to $700 billion and giving GOP defense hawks a long-sought victory. 

“We made a promise to the country that we would rebuild our military. Aging equipment, personnel shortages, training lapses, maintenance lapses — all of this has cost us,” said House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican. “With this week’s critical funding bill we will begin to reverse that damage.”

Domestic accounts would get a generous 10 percent increase on average as well, awarding Democrats the sort of spending increases they sought but never secured during the Obama administration.

Opioid problem

Democrats touted billions to fight the nation’s opioid addiction epidemic. More than $2 billion would go to strengthen school safety through grants for training, security measures and treatment for the mentally ill. Medical research at the National Institutes of Health, a long-standing bipartisan priority, would receive a record $3 billion increase to $37 billion.

“We have worked to restore and in many cases increase investments in education, health care, opioids, NIH, child care, college affordability and other domestic and military priorities,” said Senator Patty Murray, a Washington state Democrat who has been a key negotiator of the measure.

Agencies historically unpopular with Republicans, such as the Internal Revenue Service, appear likely to get increases, too, in part to prepare for implementation of Trump’s recently passed tax measure. The Environmental Protection Agency, always a GOP target, may get a reprieve this year.

Lawmakers agreed on the broad outlines of the budget plan last month, after a standoff forced an overnight shutdown. The legislation implementing that deal is viewed as possibly one of few bills moving through Congress this year, making it a target for lawmakers and lobbyists seeking to attach their top priorities. 

But efforts to add on unrelated legislation to tackle politically charged issues, such as immigration and rapidly rising health insurance premiums, appeared to be faltering.

Dreamer measure

An effort to extend protections for so-called Dreamer immigrants brought to the country as children appears to have failed. Democrats seemed likely to yield on $1.6 billion in wall funding as outlined in Trump’s official request for the 2018 budget year, but they were digging in against Trump’s plans to hire hundreds of new Border Patrol and immigration enforcement agents.

A dispute over abortion seemed likely to scuttle a Senate GOP plan to provide billions in federal subsidies to insurers to help curb health insurance premium increases.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, was working on Trump’s behalf against funding for a Hudson River tunnel and rail project that’s important to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, and Republicans from New York and New Jersey.

The bill would implement last month’s budget agreement, adding $143 billion over limits set under a 2011 budget and debt pact that forced automatic budget cuts on annual agency appropriations. Coupled with last year’s tax cuts, it heralds the return of trillion-dollar budget deficits as soon as the budget year starting in October.

Republican conservatives are dismayed by the free-spending measure, meaning Democratic votes are required to pass it. That gave Democrats leverage to force GOP negotiators to drop numerous policy riders that Democrats considered poison pills.

Ryan said negotiations were ongoing about adding a widely backed measure that aims to strengthen federal background checks by prodding states to provide all records that disqualify people with severe mental health problems and other issues from buying firearms.

Grain sales subsidies

Republicans continued to press to fix a glitch in the recent tax bill that subsidizes grain sales to cooperatives at the expense of for-profit grain companies, lawmakers said.

“We need to fix that problem,” said House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican. Schumer was demanding a provision of his own — tax subsidies to construct low-income housing — in exchange, lawmakers said.

The president, meanwhile, has privately threatened to veto the whole package if a $900 million payment is made on the Hudson River Gateway Project. Trump’s opposition is alarming Northeastern Republicans such as Representative Peter King of New York, who lobbied Trump on the project at a St. Patrick’s luncheon in the Capitol last week.

The Gateway Project would add an $11 billion rail tunnel under the Hudson River to complement deteriorating, century-old tunnels that are at risk of closing in a few years. The project enjoys bipartisan support among key Appropriations panel negotiators on the omnibus measure who want to get the expensive project on track while their coffers are flush with money.

“I think we ought to get it done and it has good bipartisan support,” Schumer said. “I’m not going to get into a back-and-forth with the president. This is a needed project, and I hope Congress rises to the occasion.”
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The Weinstein Co. filed for bankruptcy protection on Monday with a buyout offer in hand from a private equity firm, the latest twist in its efforts to survive the sexual misconduct scandal that brought down co-founder Harvey Weinstein, shook Hollywood and triggered a movement that spread out to convulse other industries.

The company also announced it was releasing any victims of or witnesses to Weinstein’s alleged misconduct from non-disclosure agreements preventing them from speaking out. That step had long been sought by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who filed a lawsuit against the company last month on behalf of its employees.

“Since October, it has been reported that Harvey Weinstein used non-disclosure agreements as a secret weapon to silence his accusers. Effective immediately, those ‘agreements’ end,” the company said in a statement. “No one should be afraid to speak out or coerced to stay quiet.”

In a statement, Schneiderman praised the decision as “a watershed moment for efforts to address the corrosive effects of sexual misconduct in the workplace.” 

The movie and TV studio becomes the first high-profile company to be forced into bankruptcy in the nationwide outcry over workplace sexual misconduct. Dozens of prominent men in entertainment, media, finance, politics and other realms have seen their careers derailed, but no other company has seen its very survival as tightly intertwined with the fate of one man as the Weinstein Co. 

Some 80 women, including prominent actresses, have accused Harvey Weinstein of misconduct ranging from rape to harassment. Weinstein, who was fired as his company’s CEO in October, has denied any allegations of non-consensual sex.

The Weinstein Co. said it has entered into a “stalking horse” agreement with an affiliate of Dallas-based Lantern Capital Partners, meaning the equity firm has agreed to buy the company, subject to approval by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware. 

Lantern was among a group of investors that had been in talks for months to buy the company outside of bankruptcy. That deal was complicated when Schneiderman filed his lawsuit, citing concerns that the sale would benefit executives accused of enabling Weinstein’s alleged misconduct and provide insufficient guarantees of compensation for his accusers. Talks to revive the sale finally fell apart two weeks ago when the group of buyers said they had discovered undisclosed liabilities.

The Weinstein Co. said it chose Lantern as a potential buyer because the firm was committed to keeping on the studio’s employees as a going concern.

“While we had hoped to reach a sale out of court, the Board is pleased to have a plan for maximizing the value of its assets, preserving as many jobs as possible and pursuing justice for any victims,” said Bob Weinstein, who co-founded the company with his brother Harvey in 2005 and remains chairman of the board of directors.

Lantern co-founders Andy Mitchell and Milos Brajovic said they were committed to “following through on our promise to reposition the business as a pre-eminent content provider, while cultivating a positive presence in the industry.”

Under bankruptcy protection, civil lawsuits filed by Weinstein’s accusers will be halted and no new legal claims can be brought against the company. Secured creditors will get priority for payment over the women suing the company.

Schneiderman’s lawsuit will not be halted by the bankruptcy filing because it was filed by a law enforcement agency. Schneiderman said his investigation would continue and that his office would engage with the Weinstein Co. and Lantern to ensure “that victims are compensated, employees are protected moving forward, and perpetrators and enablers of abuse are not unjustly enriched.”

Other bidders also could emerge during the bankruptcy process, particularly those interested in the company’s lucrative 277-film library, which includes award-winning films from big-name directors like Quentin Tarantino and horror releases from its Dimension label. Free of liabilities, the company’s assets could increase in value in a bankruptcy.

In more fallout over the scandal, New York’s governor directed the state attorney general to review a decision by the Manhattan district attorney’s office not to prosecute a 2015 case involving an Italian model who said Weinstein groped her.

The bankruptcy process will bring the company’s finances into public view, including the extent of its debt. The buyers who pulled out of the sale earlier this month said they discovered up to $64 million in undisclosed liabilities, including $27 million in residuals and profit participation. Those liabilities came on top of $225 million in debt, which the buyers had said they would be prepared to take on as part of a $500 million acquisition deal.

The Weinstein Co. already had been struggling financially before the scandal erupted in October with a news stories in The New York Times and The New Yorker. Harvey and Bob Weinstein started the company after leaving Miramax, the company they founded in 1979 and which became a powerhouse in `90s indie film with hits like “Pulp Fiction.” After finding success with Oscar winners “The Artist” and “The King’s Speech,” the Weinstein Co.’s output and relevance diminished in recent years. The company let go 50 employees in 2016 and continuously shuffled release dates while short of cash.

Last year, the studio sold distribution rights for the movie “Paddington 2” to Warner Bros. for more than $30 million. 
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Some coastal states opposed to President Donald Trump’s plan to allow oil and gas drilling off most of the nation’s coastline are fighting back with proposed state laws designed to thwart the proposal.

The drilling Trump proposes would take place in federal waters offshore in an area called the Outer Continental Shelf. But states control the 3 miles of ocean closest to shore and are proposing laws designed to make it difficult, or impossible, to bring the oil or gas ashore in their areas.

A look at the issue:

What States Are Doing

States including New Jersey, New York, California, South Carolina and Rhode Island have introduced bills prohibiting any infrastructure related to offshore oil or gas production from being built in or crossing their state waters. Washington state is threatening such a bill. Maryland has introduced a bill imposing strict liability on anyone who causes a spill while engaged in offshore drilling or oil or gas extraction.

“We started thinking about how we control the first three miles of ocean, and there are state rights that we have,” said New Jersey state Sen. Jeff Van Drew, a Democrat who represents the state’s southern coast. “Even if we don’t succeed in banning it outright, we can still make it a lot more expensive to do it in this area. It’s a back-door, ingenious way to block this.”

California Democratic state Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson said a ban on pipelines and docks could force the industry to rely on ships that would then have to sail to the waters of a different state to bring their cargo ashore. “What we can do is make drilling for offshore oil and gas so prohibitively expensive that it won’t pencil out,” she said.

Any Precendent?

In 1985, voters in Santa Cruz, California, required that any zoning changes to accommodate onshore facilities for offshore oil exploration or production must be approved by a vote of the electorate, one of 26 similar ordinances that were adopted in California. An oil and gas industry association unsuccessfully sued 13 of the communities, claiming they were interfering with lawful interstate commerce.

Oil Industry, U.S. Response

Andy Radford, a senior policy adviser with the American Petroleum Institute, said it has been 30 years since the last detailed analysis of potential offshore oil and gas supplies. He said states ought to welcome offshore drilling for the revenue it can produce for them. Offshore energy production in the Atlantic Ocean alone could support 265,000 jobs and generate $22 billion a year within 20 years, he said.

“We should take that step forward to advance our energy future,” he said. “Local communities and workers benefit from energy exploration and production, in addition to these investments generating significant state revenues to fund schools, hospitals and other public services.”

Connie Gillette, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, said “the laws, goals, and policies” of a state adjacent to the Outer Continental Shelf are among the factors the federal government must consider in approving oil and gas leases.

Conflicted in South Carolina

In May 2017, eight months before Trump proposed the nearly nationwide expansion of offshore drilling, a South Carolina legislator introduced a bill to prohibit oil drilling infrastructure in state waters. The bill remains in committee.

South Carolina’s House and Senate both introduced a resolution expressing support for drilling off their state’s coast and criticizing Republican Gov. Henry McMaster’s request to be exempted from the plan, saying the request is “tantamount to the state exercising excessive control of South Carolina’s free market.”
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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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