Economy
Deutsche Bahn to cut about 6,000 jobs at its cargo subsidiary
Deutsche Bahn, Germany’s state-owned national rail operator, said Thursday it would cut about 6,000 jobs at its cargo subsidiary in a bid to boost profitability and reduce dependence on government funds.
“The current restructuring plan envisages a reduction of approximately 6,000 jobs at DB Cargo,” Deutsche Bahn said in a blog post.
“The plan is to implement this in a socially responsible manner.”
Loss-making DB Cargo is facing an EU investigation under state aid rules, and an official decision is due in October.
Cutting 6,000 jobs – about half the firm’s workforce – would help the cargo division stand on its own two feet, Deutsche Bahn said.
“The goal is to align DB Cargo with European growth markets, streamline structures and thus make it sustainably profitable,” it said.
“This will enable the company to comply with the conditions of an EU competition procedure.”
China sees an opening to turn U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs to its advantage by reshaping global trade in ways that would insulate its $19 trillion economy from U.S. pressure far into the future. Beijing is exploiting the uncertainty created by Trump to try to stitch China’s vast manufacturing base into the world’s biggest economic blocs, including the European Union, Gulf States and a trans-Pacific trade pact, a Reuters examination found. The push involves accelerating efforts to clinch some 20 trade deals in total, many years in the making, despite widespread concerns about China’s overproduction, uneven market access and soft domestic demand.
A Reuters review of 100 Chinese-language articles by state-backed trade scholars written since 2017 reveals a systematic push by China’s policy advisers to reverse-engineer U.S. trade policy and neutralize Washington’s containment strategy. China is now putting that blueprint into action. The deal reached with Canada during Prime Minister Mark Carney’s January visit to Beijing – which slashes tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles – was the first of many aimed at breaking U.S. leverage, according to interviews with 10 people, including Chinese officials and trade diplomats.
“Don’t interrupt your opponent when he is making a mistake,” said one Chinese official of Trump’s disruptive trade agenda.
The review, drawn from over 2,000 trade-strategy papers endorsed by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) and Peking University, which advise top leaders, shows policy insiders broadly accept that painful structural change is a price worth paying for China’s long-term dominance of global commerce. The papers’ contents are reported here for the first time.
If successful, Beijing could upend more than a decade of U.S. trade policy by placing itself at the heart of a new, China-shaped multilateral order, two Western diplomats said.
“The Chinese have a golden opportunity now,” said Alicia Garcia Herrero, senior fellow at the Bruegel think tank.
China’s commerce ministry didn’t respond to a request for comment about Beijing’s strategy.
Asked about China’s approach, a U.S. official told Reuters it was no surprise that countries with large trade surpluses sought to maintain globalization.
“President Trump is fixing the problems globalization caused for the United States while other countries are trying to double down on globalization as free market access to the United States goes away,” the official said.
BUILDING BLOCS
Building blocs
The shift in China’s tone reflects its calculations. A year ago, Beijing was invoking Mao Zedong and its ability to fend off the West in the Korean War with martial propaganda.
Now, as China prepares to welcome Trump in April, its diplomats are touring the world urging trading partners to join it in defending multilateralism and open trade. In January, China dispatched its top diplomat to tiny Lesotho – which Trump initially hit with a 50% tariff – to pledge development cooperation. On Saturday, state media said China would implement zero tariffs on imports from 53 African countries. Meanwhile, China is pitching AI-powered customs systems to neighbors and working to retool digital infrastructure that underpin commerce.
The moves underline a goal identified in the policy papers: to embed China so deeply in global trade that partners can’t afford to decouple under U.S. pressure.
“In countering U.S. strategic competition with China, ‘anti-decoupling’ should become China’s primary focus,” wrote Ni Feng, fellow at CASS’s Institute of American Studies, in 2024.
Chinese officials are now working to fast-track stalled trade talks. Since 2017, China has been negotiating with countries including Honduras, Panama, Peru, South Korea and Switzerland.
“We are willing to negotiate bilateral and regional trade and investment agreements with interested countries and regions,” Commerce Ministry spokesperson He Yongqian told Reuters during Carney’s visit, without elaborating. China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi surprised European negotiators in November by raising the prospect of a free-trade agreement with Brussels during talks with his Estonian counterpart. A month later, Wang pressed the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to conclude long-running talks on a free-trade agreement. In January, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer agreed with Chinese leader Xi Jinping to launch a feasibility study into a trade-in-services agreement that could reduce barriers for British firms. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has said he will seek “strategic partnerships” with China during a trip next week.
China’s commerce minister Wang Wentao has made joining the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) a priority. The pact has its roots in the U.S.-backed Trans-Pacific Partnership, developed in part to counter China before Washington withdrew in 2017.
But China’s huge trade surplus complicates the pitch. Some member countries worry Chinese manufacturers may use improved market access to funnel excess low-cost goods abroad, while China’s domestic demand remains sluggish.
Wendy Cutler, chief negotiator during the Obama administration for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, acknowledged the window for Beijing to champion trade and multilateralism but said China needed to go beyond talk.
“And with its huge trade imbalances, as well as some of the coercive measures it’s now taking against countries like Japan, it’s hard to see how they’re walking the walk,” Cutler told Reuters.
A senior European trade diplomat dismissed Beijing’s overtures as “pure Chinese propaganda,” saying Brussels had no plans for a trade deal. Chinese advisers are undeterred. Speaking to Reuters, one noted the EU and China had negotiated a landmark 2020 investment deal during Trump’s first term. The deal, however, was frozen in 2021 before it could take effect amid a dispute over human-rights sanctions.
Lessons learned
Some Chinese advisers contend in the papers that Beijing should study how Washington has “weaponized” global institutions to contain China, and exploit openings created by Trump’s willingness to abandon or sideline multilateral bodies such as the World Trade Organization.
Others argue Beijing should focus on influencing global standards in fields such as intellectual property through initiatives like Xi’s Belt and Road program and China’s membership of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, which covers about 30% of global GDP.
China is now applying those insights. Its recently upgraded deal with Southeast Asian states, for example, focuses on AI-driven and digital trade, where China hopes to secure a first-mover advantage.
Indeed, China’s vision for customs processing is evident at its “Friendship Port” on the Vietnamese border, where state media says home-grown AI solutions have slashed waiting times by 20%, enabling faster deliveries. Reuters couldn’t independently verify the claim.
Trillion-dollar surplus
The risks that China’s $1.2 trillion trade surplus poses to trading partners’ manufacturing sectors are hard to overlook, however. Pascal Lamy, former WTO director-general and EU trade commissioner, said Chinese firms are sending more goods to Europe than the bloc can absorb.
“It’s a mystery how, given the nature of the regime, given the sort of collective cleverness, how is it that they have not succeeded in rebalancing their economic model?” he said. Not everyone sees closer ties with China as the easiest way to curb reliance on the U.S.
Stephen Nagy, China project lead at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute in Ottawa, said Carney’s tariff-cutting agreement with Xi appears designed to build leverage before talks over the U.S.-Mexico-Canada (USMCA) trade deal.
“I think his bet is wrong,” he added, predicting that Trump wouldn’t be swayed. Carney has said Canada respects its USMCA commitment not to pursue free-trade deals with non-market economies. His office didn’t respond to a request for comment. Mexico, for its part, is wary of endangering U.S. market access by moving too close to China.
“We see no need for a free-trade agreement with China right now,” said a Mexican trade official. “We are already in the CPTPP and have 60% of world GDP covered.”
Beijing’s trade partners really need China to revive its consumption, said Fred Neumann, chief economist for Asia Pacific at HSBC. Wang, China’s commerce minister, has said growing imports is a priority as Beijing prepares to launch its next five-year plan in March, in line with a commitment to raise consumption’s share of GDP. But rebalancing is a long-term project. Trump has three years left in office, and the next administration could revert to building coalitions to contain China.
China must “study in depth the logic of U.S. actions within international institutions and the possible next steps it may take to better respond to increasingly fierce strategic offensives in the future,” Zhao Pu, then at Renmin University and now a researcher at CASS’s Institute of American Studies, wrote in 2023.
Turkish tea export revenues jumped 66% in January compared to the same period last year, reaching $2.1 million (TL 91.92 million), according to a report on Thursday based on the data from a provincial association.
The tea was sold to 51 countries, autonomous and free zones, in January, according to a data compilation by Anadolu Agency (AA) from the Eastern Black Sea Exporters Association (DKIB).
The recorded Turkish tea exports in the first month of last year were around $1.26 million, the report suggested.
In terms of quantity, foreign sales, which were 208 tons in January last year, increased by 28% this year, rising to 267 tons.
The U.K. ranked first as the leading location for tea exports from Türkiye, contributing revenue of around $891,117. It was followed by Germany with $283,455 and the U.S. with $114,743.
Şaban Turgut, vice chairperson of the board of directors at DKIB, in his assessment to AA, said that they had a strong start to the year in tea exports.
Turgut stated that the increase in January is promising for the sector, adding: “Starting the year with an increase both in terms of value and quantity is extremely pleasing for our sector. The increased demand for Turkish tea in the European market, in particular, shows that our promotional activities and quality-focused production are bearing results.”
Moreover, he emphasized that they will focus on exporting value-added and branded products.
“We aim not only to increase the quantity but also to develop value-added exports. Our efforts to increase tea exports in the packaged, branded and special product segments continue. We aim to promote the natural, aromatic and quality structure of Turkish tea in more countries. We plan to expand into new markets in addition to deepening in existing ones,” he conveyed.
Consumer confidence in Türkiye improved in February, with the index rising 2.3% from the previous month to 85.7 points, official data showed Thursday.
The index stood at 83.7 in January, according to the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat).
Among subindices, the sub-index measuring the financial situation of households at present rose 4.6% in February compared with the previous month, and expectations for household financial conditions over the next 12 months climbed 4.2%, data revealed.
Expectations for spending on durable goods over the next 12 months climbed 1.3% on a monthly basis.
On the other hand, expectations for the general economic situation over the next year edged down 0.1% in February.
The consumer confidence index is considered a key indicator of economic sentiment, reflecting households’ views on financial conditions, the broader economy, and spending intentions.
The index can take a value between zero and 200. It indicates an optimistic outlook when the index is above 100 and a pessimistic outlook when it is below 100.
Total home sales in Türkiye were slightly down in the first month of 2026, official data showed on Thursday, reversing the recent trend of strong demand in the property market despite higher borrowing costs in the country.
A total of 111,480 houses were sold in Türkiye in January, marking a 4.7% decrease from the same month last year, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) data revealed. In January 2025, the country recorded 117,025 housing sales.
This comes after a record year for the property market with close to 1.7 million sales last year, more than 14% compared to a year earlier.
The renewed version of the housing report, shared once a month by the statistics office, also included commercial property sales for the first time.
The report also, instead of focusing on cumulative housing unit sales, displayed in detail sales separated into new and second-hand house sales, as well as commercial sales.
New home sales in the country dropped 2.1% year-over-year to 34,069 units in January, while second-hand sales decreased 5.9% over the same period to 77,411 units, TurkStat said.
New sales accounted for 30.6%, while second-hand house sales accounted for 69.4% of total house sales, the report said.
Mortgage-financed sales surged 15.7% from a year earlier, totaling 20,263 homes and accounting for 18.2% of all transactions.
Sales to foreign buyers, however, declined 20.8% to 1,306 units. Russians, Iranians, and Ukrainians made up the largest share of foreign purchasers.
At the same time, the data revealed that new commercial property sales decreased by 9.2% in January compared to the same month of the previous year to 3,444 units. Second-hand commercial property sales were down by 14.5% yearly to 9,823 units, TurkStat said.
The Turkish central bank cut the key interest rate by 100 basis points to 37% in January, continuing an easing cycle, albeit at a slower pace in the face of a stronger uptick in monthly prices.
The data shared by the bank earlier this week showed that the Residential Property Price Index (RPPI), which measures quality-adjusted price changes in the sector, posted a monthly increase of 3.7%.
The RPPI increased annually by 27.7% in nominal terms and decreased by 2.3% in real terms, the Central Bank of the Republic of Türkiye (CBRT) said.
According to the data, the highest annual increase in January was observed in eastern provinces like Bingöl, Elazığ, and Malatya at 34.2%, while the lowest annual rise was observed in western provinces of Edirne, Kırklareli and Tekirdağ at 18.2%.
The Turkish army pension fund Oyak will focus on investments that boost operational profitability in infrastructure, energy and logistics, with the goal of nearly doubling its total asset value by 2030, its CEO said on Wednesday.
Murat Yalçıntaş was speaking at a press conference to outlined the fund’s upcoming investment plans, including new foreign capital, infrastructure spending and expansion in energy, mining and logistics.
Yalçıntaş said the company has identified infrastructure, energy, logistics, high technology and mining as priority sectors under its 2030 vision.
Accordingly, Oyak aims to strengthen its balance sheet and enhance cash generation and capital efficiency while expanding its asset value from current $35.4 billion to $60 billion by the end of the decade.
Ports, refinery investments in focus
Yalçıntaş said the fund plans significant investments in ports and refinery projects, alongside preparations for new public offerings across several group companies.
“We are planning port investments as part of our logistics strategy and are also evaluating other ports,” he said, adding that the group is working on multiple alternatives for a refinery investment both in Türkiye and abroad.
He also noted that Oyak Çimento has reached an advanced stage in overseas discussions with Taiwanese partners, while the mining division aims to expand internationally. In automotive, the group will prioritize hybrid engine and electric vehicle technologies, he added.
Foreign capital inflow from Oman
Yalçıntaş said Oyak will bring foreign investment into one of its domestic businesses and announce the deal within a week as part of a deal with Oman Investment Authority (OIA).
The cooperation has already produced two concrete outcomes, he said, including foreign investment into Hektaş’s Uzbekistan project and a new capital inflow into a domestic Oyak company expected to be announced shortly.
He added that the group is also evaluating participation in another investment fund being established in Central Asia.
IPO pipeline, export growth target
Oyak is preparing new initial public offerings (IPOs) and aims to expand its capital markets portfolio by 50% by 2030, starting with companies that have sustainable cash flow, Yalçıntaş said, adding that at least one listing is planned this year.
Operating in sectors including mining and metallurgy, cement, automotive, energy, chemicals, food, finance and construction, Oyak has more than 130 companies across 24 countries. As of June 2025, the group reported $8.6 billion in consolidated revenue, $509 million in operating profit and $1.3 billion in net profit.
Oyak companies generated $6 billion in exports in 2024, accounting for 2.3% of Türkiye’s total exports, with preliminary data indicating roughly 6% growth in 2025, mainly driven by automotive, mining-metallurgy and energy.
The group aims to raise exports to $10 billion by 2030, Yalçıntaş said, adding that while investment discussions regarding Syria are ongoing, any concrete move is more likely in 2027 rather than 2026.
Türkiye’s steel industry will shift its export strategy toward nearby and neighboring markets, prioritizing the European Union, the Balkans and Eastern Europe, as global demand weakens and protectionist measures rise, according to head of the sector’s exporters’ group.
Adnan Aslan, chair of the Steel Exporters Union (ÇIB), said on Tuesday that the industry has reshaped its growth strategy in response to tightening global conditions, aiming to focus less on distant markets and more on geographically closer destinations.
“In this environment, growth is only possible by targeting the right markets with a flexible strategy,” Aslan said at a meeting outlining the sector’s 2025 performance and 2026 outlook.
Aslan said EU countries, non-EU European markets, the Balkans, Eastern Europe and neighboring regions will be among the primary destinations in the coming period. He set a modestly higher export target of $17 billion for 2026, compared with the previous year.
The shift reflects rising logistical costs and increasing barriers such as tariffs and quotas in distant markets, while nearby regions offer advantages including faster delivery, flexible production and stronger trade ties, he added.
In 2025, Türkiye exported 7.9 million tons of steel to the EU and 3.7 million tons to other European countries, with Europe accounting for roughly 60% of total steel exports.
Recovery expected in Europe
Aslan said uncertainty surrounding the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) had weighed on demand, causing exports to start 2026 on a weaker footing. However, he expects a rebound beginning in March and April as clarity improves and delayed purchases resume.
For 2026, the sector aims to export 20 million tons of steel worth $17 billion, up from 19.4 million tons and $16.5 billion in 2025.
Aslan added that expanding production of higher-value-added steel products forms the second pillar of the industry’s new growth strategy, helping Turkish producers avoid direct price competition with lower-cost suppliers such as China and India.
Rising imports, costs strain industry
Uğur Dalbeler, vice chair of the ÇIB, warned that rising imports remain one of the biggest risks for the Turkish steel sector.
Despite producing around 38 million tons and consuming about 39 million tons annually, Türkiye imports nearly half of its steel consumption, Dalbeler said, calling this the sector’s main structural challenge.
He noted that growing global protectionism, state-backed competition in Asia and mounting domestic cost pressures, particularly in energy and labor, have forced some producers to cut shifts and lay off workers.
Labor costs in dollar terms have tripled over the past five years, Dalbeler said, adding that employment within companies affiliated with the Metal Industrialists Association (MESS) fell by 20,000 over the past six months as of January.
On domestic demand, Dalbeler said the sector may face a subdued period as public spending, which previously supported steel consumption, has weakened and post-earthquake housing-driven demand appears to be nearing completion.
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