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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…

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…

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…

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…

The Justice Department has opened an antitrust investigation into whether AT&T, Verizon and a standards-setting group worked together to stop consumers from easily switching wireless carriers.   The companies confirmed the inquiry in separate statements late Friday in response to a report in The New York Times.    The U.S. government is looking into whether AT&T, Verizon and telecommunications standards organization GSMA worked together to suppress a technology that lets people remotely switch wireless companies without having to insert a new SIM card into their phones.    The Times, citing six anonymous people familiar with the inquiry, reported that the investigation was opened after at least one device maker and one other wireless company filed complaints. Verizon, AT&T respond  Verizon, which is based in New York, derided the accusations on…

Russian companies hit by U.S. sanctions, including aluminum giant Rusal, have asked for 100 billion rubles ($1.6 billion) in liquidity support from the government, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying Friday. The United States on April 6 imposed sanctions against several Russian entities and individuals, including Rusal and its major shareholder, Oleg Deripaska, to punish Moscow for its suspected meddling in the 2016 U.S. election and other alleged "malign activity." Rusal, the world's second-biggest aluminum producer, has been particularly hard hit as the sanctions have caused concern among some customers, suppliers and creditors that they could be blacklisted, too, through association with the company. "Temporary nationalization" is an option for some sanctions-hit companies, but not Rusal, Siluanov was quoted as saying. He did not name the companies he was referring to. A Kremlin spokesman…

U.S. news reports say Wells Fargo will be fined as much as $1 billion for illegally selling customers car insurance policies they did not want or need, and for charging unnecessary fees in connection with mortgages. This would be the largest fine ever imposed by federal bank regulators and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The fine is part of a settlement regulators negotiated with the bank. Wells Fargo and federal officials have not commented on the reports. The San Francisco-based lender admitted selling the unwanted insurance policies to hundreds of thousands of car loan customers. In many cases, the borrowers could not afford both the insurance and car payments and their cars were repossessed. Many U.S. banks have enjoyed looser federal regulations under President Donald Trump's pro-business administration. But Trump denied…

The biggest danger from the U.S.-China trade dispute is the threat to global confidence and investment, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde said on Thursday. The IMF chief said the tariffs threatened by the world’s two largest economies would have a modest direct impact on the global economy but could produce uncertainty that choked off investment, one of the key drivers of rising global growth. “The actual impact on growth is not very substantial, when you measure in terms of GDP,” Lagarde said of the tariffs, adding that the “erosion of confidence” would be worse. “When investors do not know under what terms they will be trading, when they don’t know how to organize their supply chain, they are reluctant to invest,” she told a news conference in Washington…

Russian aluminum giant Rusal is stockpiling large quantities of aluminum at one of its plants in Siberia because U.S. sanctions imposed this month have prevented it from selling the metal to customers, five sources close to the company said. With the firm's own storage space filling up with unsold aluminum, Rusal executives in Sayanogorsk, in southern Siberia, have had to rent out additional space to accommodate the surplus stock, one of the sources told Reuters. "Aluminum sales have broken down. And now the surplus aluminum is being warehoused in production areas of the factory itself," said someone who works on the grounds of one of Rusal's two plants in Sayanogorsk. Several people connected to Rusal said that Oleg Deripaska, the company's main shareholder who along with the company was included…

Russia demanded compensation from the U.S. for its worldwide tariffs on foreign aluminum and steel Thursday, becoming the third influential member of the World Trade Organization to do so. China, the European Union and India have also objected, arguing the tariffs are a "safeguard" measure to protect U.S. domestic products from imports, which require compensation for major exporting countries. The Trump administration has rejected that argument and says the tariffs are for national security reasons and are therefore allowed under international law. The U.S. has agreed to negotiate with China and has informed the EU and India it is willing to discuss any other issue, while maintaining their compensation claims are unwarranted. It is unclear what Moscow's demand means in practice because it did not challenge the tariffs through a…

SunPower Corp. on Wednesday said it would buy U.S. solar panel maker SolarWorld Americas, expanding its domestic manufacturing as it seeks to stem the impact of Trump administration tariffs on panel imports. The White House cheered the deal, saying it was proof that Trump's trade policies were stimulating U.S. investment. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The news sent SunPower's shares up 12 percent on the Nasdaq to their highest level since before President Donald Trump imposed 30 percent tariffs on imported solar panels in January. "The time is right for SunPower to invest in U.S. manufacturing," chief executive Tom Werner said in a statement. SunPower is based in San Jose, California, but most of its manufacturing is in the Philippines and Mexico. The company had lobbied heavily against the solar trade case brought last year by U.S.…

President Donald Trump's tariffs on imported aluminum and steel are disrupting business for hundreds of American companies that buy those metals, and many are pressing for relief. Nearly 2,200 companies are asking the Commerce Department to exempt them from the 25 percent steel tariff, and more than 200 other companies are asking to be spared the 10 percent aluminum tariff. Other companies are weighing their options. Jody Fledderman, chief executive of Batesville Tool & Die in Indiana, said American steelmakers have already raised their prices since Trump's tariffs were announced last month. Fledderman said he might have to shift production to a plant in Mexico, where he can buy cheaper steel. A group of small- and medium-size manufacturers are gathering in Washington to announce a coalition to fight the steel tariff.…

German Chancellor Angela Merkel backs the idea of a European Monetary Fund, provided national governments have sufficient oversight, sources close to her said before a visit by the French president. President Emmanuel Macron, who will meet Merkel in Berlin on Thursday, is pushing hard for bold euro zone reforms to defend the 19-member currency bloc against any repeat of the financial crisis that took hold in 2009 and threatened to tear it apart. His vision includes turning Europe’s existing ESM bailout fund into a European Monetary Fund (EMF). At one point, Macron also suggested the zone should have its own budget worth hundreds of billions of euros, an idea that does not sit well with Germany. Merkel told lawmakers from her conservative bloc on Tuesday that she favored the EMF…

The European Commission will put forward a proposed free-trade agreement with Japan for fast-track approval Wednesday, hoping to avoid a repeat of the public protests that nearly derailed a trade pact with Canada two years ago. The European Union and Japan concluded negotiations to create the world’s largest economic area in December, signaling their rejection of the protectionist stance of U.S. President Donald Trump. Now they want to see it go into force. The agreement would remove EU tariffs of 10 percent on Japanese cars and the 3 percent rate for most car parts. It would also scrap Japanese duties of some 30 percent on EU cheese and 15 percent on wines, and secure access to large public tenders in Japan. Canada deal memories The commission, which negotiates trade agreements…

The city of Yanan, a major wind power base in northwest China’s Shaanxi province, has introduced a lottery system to decide which wind projects will go ahead this year, a sign that grid constraints are forcing local governments to restrict capacity. China has been aggressively developing alternative power as part of its efforts to cut pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Grid-connected wind power reached 163.7 gigawatts (GW) last year, up 10.1 percent on the year and amounting to 9.2 percent of total generating capacity. But capacity expansion has outpaced grid construction, and large numbers of wind, solar and hydropower plants are unable to deliver all their power to consumers as a result of transmission deficiencies, a problem known as curtailment. Grid constraints According to a Yanan planning agency notice seen…

Chevron said on Tuesday two of its executives were arrested in Venezuela, a rare move likely to spook foreign energy firms still operating in the OPEC nation stricken by hyperinflation, shortages and crime. Venezuelan Sebin intelligence agents burst into the Petropiar joint venture’s office in the coastal city of Puerto La Cruz on Monday and arrested the two Venezuelan employees for alleged wrongdoing, a half-dozen sources with knowledge of the detentions told Reuters. Venezuela’s Information Ministry and state oil company PDVSA did not respond to a request for information about the detentions, which come amid a crackdown on alleged graft in the oil sector. One of the detainees, Carlos Algarra, is a Venezuelan chemical engineer and expert in oil upgrading whom Chevron had brought in from its Argentina operations. The…

China has responded to U.S. President Donald Trump's charges China and Russia are manipulating the value of their currencies. Monday, Trump tweeted, "Russia and China are playing the Currency Devaluation game as the U.S. keeps raising interest rates. Not acceptable!" His charge came just days after the U.S. Treasury Department declined to label China and Russia as currency manipulators in its latest report. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said Tuesday the messages coming from the United States are confusing, and China will continue to promote the reform of its currency exchange rate mechanism. Trump said Russia and China are devaluing their currencies amid a possible new round of sanctions against Russia and a simmering trade war with China. In general, when a country artificially devalues its currency, its exports…

The Supreme Court is hearing arguments about whether a rule it announced decades ago in a case involving a catalog retailer should still apply in the age of the internet. The case on Tuesday focuses on businesses' collection of sales tax on online purchases. Right now, under the decades-old Supreme Court rule, if a business is shipping a product to a state where it doesn't have an office, warehouse or other physical presence, it doesn't have to collect the state's sales tax. Customers are generally supposed to pay the tax to the state themselves, but the vast majority don't. States say that as a result of the rule and the growth of internet shopping, they're losing billions of dollars in tax revenue every year. More than 40 states are asking…

Every year when the pastoralist men in Fatima Demba's Mauritanian village return from their months-long journey to find pastures and water, the women erupt in wild celebrations. "We draw henna tattoos on our bodies, we braid our hair, we wear our nicest clothes," she said, re-adjusting her bright yellow and blue robe. Yet although she longs for her husband to come home, Demba sees one benefit in his absence. "I am in charge of everything," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, sitting in the shade of a mud-brick hut in Mafoundou village. "Our money, our field of millet — even the village's borehole is my responsibility." Prolonged dry spells in this southern region of Mauritania have depleted grazing land, forcing pastoralists to travel ever longer distances to search for food…