Free Republic

Europe’s top monetary official criticized U.S. President Donald Trump’s proposal to put tariffs on steel and aluminum imports as a “dangerous” unilateral move. Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, said that the “immediate spillover of the trade measures … is not going to be big.” But he said such disputes should be worked out among trade partners, not decided by measures initiated from one side. “Whatever convictions one has about trade … we are convinced that disputes should be discussed and resolved in a multilateral framework, that unilateral decisions are dangerous.” “There is a certain worry or...

Berlin must work with Paris to improve and deepen the European Union, German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel urged as his Social Democrats weigh renewing a coalition with Chancellor Angela Merkel. France and Germany, once bitter enemies, “have a joint responsibility to develop all of Europe further,” he told AFP, highlighting “reform of the economic and monetary union” as a top priority. Historically, the two countries have been the powerhouse of the economic integration project that became the European Union; but French President Emmanuel Macron’s plans to shore up the 19-nation euro single currency area and deepen European integration are on...

BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel is considering joining French President Emmanuel Macron at the World Economic Forum in Davos next week in what could turn into an epic clash of competing world views with U.S. President Donald Trump. Merkel, who has been struggling to put together a government since a German election in September, had been expected to skip the annual gathering of leaders, CEOs, bankers and celebrities in the Swiss Alps for a third straight year. But after clinching a preliminary coalition agreement with the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) on Friday, German officials said Merkel could travel...

France’s Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire on Wednesday urged Germany to plow more investments into major European projects and allow wages to rise, as part of Berlin’s contribution to boosting growth in Europe. “France has taken on its European responsibilities, in reducing its public spending and reforming its economy. We expect Germany to join the movement, by adopting more offensive wage policies and investing more,” he told Die Zeit weekly at a time when Chancellor Angela Merkel is battling to form a new coalition government. Le Maire’s call comes at a sensitive time for Merkel, as public spending is a...

French President Emmanuel Macron has offered a very special gift to his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, during his trip to China — a horse from France’s famed Garde Républicaine. The nine-year-old gelding bred in Normandy, named Vesuve de Brekka, is trained and ready for use. […] The tweet says the horse is “a symbol of our friendship.” Macron hopes for big things in return. On Tuesday, the second day of his visit, Macron said the two nations should “settle on an economic and geopolitical plan for the affairs of our world.” …

Last week, the finance ministers of Europe's five biggest economies — Germany, France, the UK, Spain and Italy — wrote an anxious letter to their American colleague, US Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin, and copied it to all senior Republican politicians in the Congress and Senate. The letter's thrust: The draft US tax bill, if passed as written a week ago, would represent a break with global fair-taxation rules as applied to corporations, and represent a thinly disguised form of trade war. "The United States is Europe's single most important trade and investment partner," the finance ministers wrote. "It is important...

The European Union’s top five economies are warning the United States that its massive tax overhaul could violate some of its international obligations and risks having “a major distortive impact” on trade. In a letter to U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin, the finance ministers of Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Spain wrote they had “significant concerns” about three tax initiatives in particular. In the letter, seen by The Associated Press, the five wrote that “it is important that the U.S. government’s rights over domestic tax policy be exercised in a way that adheres with international obligations to which...

Jean-Claude Juncker never lets others outshine him if he spots an opportunity to give the European project a boost. And that goes for friends and enemies alike. Indeed, the European Commission president has now come up with a project that not only transgressions the mandate given him by the leaders of the European Union member states, but also pits him against all the Eurozone finance ministers as well. Juncker was supposed to reach an agreement with finance ministers from the common currency area on proposals for deepening European integration he will present at the forthcoming EU summit later this month....

French finance minister Bruno Le Maire called Thursday for the European Union to become a cohesive whole, as unified and ambitious as the United States, adding that it was time for Britain to face the consequences of Brexit. The remarks come as the EU emerges from a rocky period of rising nationalism and challenges to its unity. Talks between the EU and Britain, which voted last year to secede, deadlocked in Brussels on Thursday, leaving future trade relations in doubt. “I think what we need within the Eurozone is more unity and more ambition,” Le Maire said during an event...

The head of the European Commission says he wants an official commemoration of former Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who led Germany to reunification and was a strong backer of the continent’s unity. Jean-Claude Juncker told Sunday’s Bild am Sonntag newspaper that he will personally push for a “European act of state” for Kohl, who was chancellor from 1982 to 1998, but didn’t give details. […] Juncker said that “without Helmut Kohl, the euro would not exist.” …

Billionaire financier George Soros said Thursday the European Union is in an "existential crisis" and needs to be reinvented in the face of growing threats. "The reinvention would have to revive the support that the European Union used to enjoy," the Hungarian-born Soros said at the Brussels Economic Forum. Such reinvention would have to review the past and explain to European citizens what went wrong and then make proposals to make things right. Soros welcomed a German idea to cut European funds aimed at reducing income inequalities at the regional level for those countries disrespecting the rule of law. Both...

With Germany raking in more taxes due to strong economic performance, the leader of its liberal party has suggested state officials are enriching themselves at the cost of the taxpayer. “The greed of the state has taken on kleptocratic characteristics,” Christian Lindner, head of the Free Democratic Party (FDP) told Handelsblatt on Wednesday. A kleptocracy is a form of government in which officials corruptly use public funds for personal gain. “The yearly tax intake of the state is set to be €100 billion higher in 2020 than this year, if we don’t act. For the FDP, it is clear that...

Washington has a prime opportunity to slap 100 percent tariffs on key EU exports. Iconic European products ranging from Roquefort cheese to Vespa scooters will soon be in Donald Trump’s sights.The billionaire property tycoon won the U.S. presidency on a highly protectionist agenda and vowed to slash the country’s eye-watering deficits with leading trade partners. While China and Mexico have borne the brunt of his early threats, he now has a prime opportunity to box out some of Europe’s most famous exports. Next Wednesday, the U.S. trade representative will hold a public hearing on slapping an eventual 100 percent import...

Germany has completed an effort to bring home 300 metric tons (330.7 tons) of gold stashed in the United States, part of a plan to repatriate gold bars kept abroad during the Cold War. The German central bank said it brought 111 tons of gold back from the Federal Reserve in New York last year, concluding in September — the last of 300 tons slated for return. […] Once the transfers are completed, Frankfurt will hold half of Germany’s 3,378 tons of reserve gold, with the rest in New York and London. […] During the Cold War, West Germany kept...

The European Union declared the Trump administration a “threat” on Tuesday, laying bare what many Europeans think privately and setting the stage for increased tension between the US and EU. European Union President Donald Tusk’s diplomatic bombshell listed the Trump administration as a threat alongside China, Russia, terrorism and radical Islam, adding that “worrying declarations by the new American administration all make our future highly unpredictable.” “The change in Washington puts the European Union in a difficult situation; with the new administration seeming to put into question the last 70 years of American foreign policy,” Tusk said in a letter...

A top economic adviser to US President Donald Trump bashed Germany for exploiting an undervalued euro to take advantage of its trading partners, the Financial Times reported Tuesday. The public rebuke of a major trading partner is the latest example of the brash tactic that has become a feature of the new US administration, with Trump himself using public attacks and Twitter to criticize businesses and allies, including Mexico. Peter Navarro, who advised Trump during the campaign and heads the White House’s new National Trade Council, said in an interview with the FT that Germany “continues to exploit other countries...

Germany’s Welt Am Sonntag newspaper has accused British finance minister Phillip Hammond of threatening to drastically slash corporation tax to turn the UK into an offshore tax haven if it is not given a trade deal. In an interview with Hammond, headlined “British finance minister threatens EU partners”, the paper quotes Hammond saying that Britain could be forced to change its economic model if negotiations went badly. “The British people are not going to lie down and say, ‘too bad’,” he said, when asked if the UK could slash corporation taxes. “If we have no access to the European market,...

The European Central Bank should begin winding down its expansive monetary policy in 2017 as inflation returns in the eurozone, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble said in an interview on Friday. “It would probably be right if the ECB starts daring to head for the exit this year,” Schäuble told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper — although he acknowledged it would be a “difficult task”. The ECB has fixed interest rates at record lows in the 19-nation single currency area, as well as offering cheap loans to banks and buying up tens of billions of euros per month of government and...

Former Bundesbank president Hans Tietmeyer, a key architect of the euro who oversaw its introduction in Germany, has died at the age of 85, the central bank announced Wednesday. Tietmeyer ran the mighty Bundesbank from 1993 to 1999, a period that straddled the aftermath of German reunification as well as the launch of the single European currency and the creation of the European Central Bank. […] A fierce defender of the independence of central banks, Tietmeyer was credited with ensuring that the same principle was enshrined in the statutes of the ECB, which was modeled in large part on the...

Britain’s exit from the European Union — whenever it takes place — is a cloud over the economic outlook for both the country and its major trading partners within the 19-country eurozone. Further evidence emerged Wednesday to show that businesses across the single currency bloc are fretting over the risks, while those in Britain appear to have gotten over the initial shock of the vote to leave on June 23 thanks partly to the plunge in the pound. The drop in the currency, which this week hit a 31-year low against the dollar, makes British exports more competitive. Both the...