BERLIN: German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said Tuesday he would host US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin next week, their first meeting, ahead of a gathering of G20 ministers.
"I asked him to have a bilateral meeting before. It will be held next Thursday in Berlin," Schaeuble told journalists.
The face-to-face talks with Mnuchin would follow Chancellor Angela Merkel's first meeting with US President Donald Trump in Washington next Tuesday.
It also comes just ahead of the March 17-18 gathering in Germany of central bankers and finance ministers from the G20 group of developing and developed nations.
Schaeuble said talks with Mnuchin will be "a good preparation" for the G20 meeting, and that "all the subjects that finance ministers are concerned about will be raised".
Germany's massive trade surplus is expected to be among issues raised by Mnuchin, after a top economic adviser to Trump accused Berlin of exploiting an undervalued euro to take advantage of its trading partners.
Peter Navarro, who advised Trump during the campaign and heads the White House's new National Trade Council, said in an interview with the Financial Times in January that Germany "continues to exploit other countries in the EU as well as the US with an 'implicit Deutsche mark' that is grossly undervalued."
Schaeuble rejected the criticism again on Tuesday, saying "no one can claim that we achieved this surplus through any form of manipulation".
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