story me of ground to a halt. twenty seven years ago but there's no holding back his dreams. thank you for. cinema just starts me twenty seven t.w. . more difficult news for the chinese economy as beijing sees a drop in exports so what does that mean for the asian power as trade negotiations with the u.s. into a critical phase we'll take a look. also on the show there's growing demand for a digital tax on tech giants like google and facebook but is there an economic case for it we'll talk to an expert. and diesel transport trucks are big polluters we'll show you how germany is testing a new highway lane for electric hybrid trucks. welcome to your business i'm stephen

beardsley in berlin u.s. and china have been negotiating a trade deal for months but from very different positions the american economy continues to defy expectations with strong employment and consumer demand in china economic signals are moving in the opposite direction now a new report shows exports have unexpectedly fallen. particularly hard hit to exports to the u.s. in april these fell by fifteen point seven percent for months china and the u.s. have been slapping each other with tariffs so far talks have failed to resolve the conflict on twitter president donald trump expressed his frustration threatening to hike tariffs on two hundred billion dollars worth of chinese goods from ten percent to twenty five percent this friday beijing says it wants to continue negotiations in washington this week that should also be in washington's interest u.s. exports to china have also fallen by more than thirty percent compared to the same

month last year. and let's go now to our financial correspondent in frankfurt conrad booze and conrad how much significance are traders putting on these new numbers from china. they are significant stephen not so much that they indicate activity in the chinese economy but of course trigger new talk on the trading floors about what to expect from those trade negotiations between the chinese. the united states which are expected to continue later this week also we should keep in mind that yesterday the u.s. secretary of state mike pompei all sort of snubbed the german chancellor macko who wanted to talk to him about you know how to create. positive trade relations but pale canceled the visit to travel to iraq and said you know that's not the sort of stuff to really create confidence among investors at least not here

in europe. konrad stay with us we have to talk about siemens of course the industrial giant saying that it will spin off its gas and power divisions in an i.p.o. next year the former core division which employs forty four thousand workers has come under increasing pressure in recent years as many countries move to renewable energy like wind and solar power the gas and power unit generated only three hundred seventy seven million euros profit last year making it seem least lucrative division the company plans to focus on digital industries and smart infrastructure as well as its health and ability units. and let's go back to conrad for current what should we make of this announcement of the carve out i guess of this division . well you know cell producing and selling turbines for traditional power plants driven by coal gas and nuclear this is

a business a little bit of the past and it's also a business where you have fierce competition large overcapacity siemens simply realize that it will never again be able to produce the margins in this business it used to produce in the past and that's why it's making this spinoff also this focus on you know to become more of a technology technological a digital company is perceived on the markets to be a clever move if i may say so siemens in the future wants to sell more of its brainpower and less of its hardware and investors are buying it the share price of siemens is up nicely here in frankfurt today so industrial giants seeking to become a bit more agile. and therefore is in frankfurt thank you conrad. google apple amazon and other tech firms are facing facing harsh criticism for their low tax bills the companies are making full use of loopholes and tax law and

picking lower tax locations for their headquarters the european commission has ordered apple and amazon to pay back back taxes that is in the past but the e.u. has yet to agree on a block wide digital tax on average companies in traditional sectors in the european union such as carmakers pharmaceuticals and chemical companies corporate tax of about twenty three percent of tech companies however like facebook or google pay only about nine and a half percent on average in the e.u. and more more countries including france and italy have suggested that going it alone on a special digital tax is the way to go i spoke earlier with clinton's first of the institute here in germany who opposes such a tax. the digital tax proposal is the unilateral introduction of a tax on turn over it is totally incompetent but with the international tax system so it is true that digitalization raises difficulties in the tax system but the digital tax proposal by the european commission is the wrong answer that's why we

are against it now you are making the business argument here but are you losing the popular argument that is the one of inequality that people angered over tax dodgers and in the words of bruno lemaire front france's finance minister that they want fiscal justice. we're not making the business argument this is about the economy as a whole we have an international tax system that has clear rules on who taxes walked and this tax system says companies are taxed where they develop their products where their produce they are not taxed at least not through the corporate taxes where they're sell their goods and european commission also as google serves its services in europe and we want to tax those services the services are already taxed with a value added tax and now the european commission wants to introduce an additional tax this is like introducing a tariff and would lead to countermeasures by the us what we really have here is a conflict about taxing right so who has the right to tax google the it is

primarily the u.s. now the u.s. allows google to avoid u.s. taxes that's the real problem here but this is not a problem the european commission can solve if the americans don't want to collect taxes from google that's that problem do you believe you believe there is a case to be made for alternative forms of taxation however given this. argument of inequality unfairness there are other options besides digital tax are there not. absolutely so it is correct that tax avoidance by multinational firms and digital print in particular tax for direct runs is a big problem these companies can easily shift their ip to tax havens because this is immaterial property and something needs to be done about that that's true but we need other measures in particular source taxes on license payments or other payments to these tax havens one big problem is that the european union is not coordinated so we have rules preventing individual countries from fighting this tax

avoidance and we need to change those rules not introduce a new tax a tax by the way that would collect very little revenue or that. very little revenue eight hundred million for germany less than five billion for the e.u. as a whole the digital tax doesn't solve the tax avoidance problem we need to reform the international corporate tax system to address that problem. that was clemens foose of the evil institute he joined us from munich and speaking of taxes the new york times says president trump quote appears to have lost more money than nearly any other individual american taxpayer the most the paper said it has acquired tax records showing trump's businesses lost more than one billion dollars between one nine hundred eighty five and one thousand nine hundred four it says that allowed him to avoid paying income taxes for eight of those years report comes the day after treasury secretary steven minucci denied democratic lawmakers request for

trump's tax returns saying that requests threaten taxpayer privacy. staying in the u.s. google's highly anticipated io developers conference has kicked off in silicon valley presenting a raft of shiny new offerings the search giant showed off its new pixel phones along with augmented reality for google search results and improved artificial intelligence for google assistant c.e.o. sundar pichai also said his firm was responding to growing concerns about privacy by giving users more control over how they're being tracked on the internet including alerting them to the use of their location data. loud diesel guzzling polluting trucks are a common sight on german roads and their numbers are only increasing but a solution might be in sight germany has just opened its first electric highway for hybrid trucks testing the technology on both sides of a five kilometer stretch south of frankfurt the highway allows trucks to draw electric power from overhead cables. current drainage pettersen electric trucks are

nothing new he works for the swedish manufacturer scania which has been developing in building electric trucks for a number of years and this new model gets its power from overhead contact lines using a pantograph. the silence things and the friends. when you turn off the entirely combustion engine and go electric. you still have a little noise from the. tires of course but you have no vibration and no sign sound from the diesel and there are five kilometers of overhead contract lines in each direction on this stretch of the autobahn with tests on the way in northern and southern germany. this is standardized the highway of all this is the same all over the height is the same so this truck can also go in the swedish road and they can also go on the road saying. about it oh well connected to the overhead

lines of trucks battery charges so it needs much less battery volume than a purely battery driven each truck. the battery is physical size is from here to here and about sixty centimeters deep the rest of the box is cooling and power electronics to keep the battery cool or warm depending on the weather outside in a few weeks five logistics companies will start delivering goods via the highway the overhead line will save companies time. to move and here i have the possibility to load the view during operation but can make my delivery my pickup truck back to the loading location and can load again at the same time and basically if you do it right the battery is never empty and you never need to plug in the vehicles battery or refuel diesel between trips i need to show that's a huge advantage that michelin just spoke to does this mean for time electro trucks

running off the overhead contract lines are quiet and environmentally friendly but they're only one element in finding alternatives to fossil fuel. drivers that right hilling firm are staging a strike in the us and some cities around the world on wednesday that in advance of the company's initial public offering the company's drivers complain that their income is too low or typically expect them to use their own cars and pay for their own gas and insurance. a larger cut of their fares. for us thanks for watching.

some time in the twenty sixth. my great granddaughter. put the world. in around half a century. your world will be around to greece mom and the bottom of the sea levels rise by at least one central. we're going to have some climate impacts missouri.

the odds. are people are more concerned. first. the news from the sun is what's coming up today our special guest is john anderson he's the founder of a radical record label puts the office and. we bring you the data entry a gigantic creative life in london. and we take a look at a man who tried to bring heaven down to

a late abstract artist also prenup. but joining me straight away is john anderson the boss of records this is a classical record company which is a bit special because it's a nonprofit making co-operative which puts the office in charge it sounds wonderful . but how does it work because you have to make some money to pay people who work for you of course we have a team of fifteen effect that we have to pay and that is a talent obviously but the goal with with all to take was to find a way of making. something in the world of something which is not really of the world soul music which is priceless which is not transactional which is as a value completely different from commercial value. but in some way finding a way to.