China and the European Union will hold ministerial-level trade talks once or twice a year, China's Commerce Ministry said Thursday, as the two sides work to increase and rebalance trade.

The EU faces growing pressure to reduce its trade deficit with China, which widened to about 360 billion euros ($410 billion) last year, nearly 1 billion euros a day. Chinese cars and batteries are among items increasingly exported to Europe.

The real estate mogul has become the billion-dollar crypto man.

President Donald Trump's latest financial disclosure report showed he took in about $1.2 billion last year from various crypto holdings, overshadowing a real estate business that brought him fame and helped propel him to the nation's top office.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday defended earning around $1.2 billion from his family's cryptocurrency activities last year, saying "everybody's profiting" from his time in power.

"You know why I'm profiting, because the stock market's going up, everybody's profiting," Trump told reporters as he prepared to take his first flight on a new Air Force One plane gifted by Qatar.

The European Union rolled out two measures to protect its steel industry and limit e-commerce small parcels on Wednesday as the 27-nation bloc grapples with its staggering trade imbalance with China.

"Today's change is about restoring fairness for European businesses and better protecting our consumers," European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in an online post praising a new 3 euro ($3.42) customs duty on small packages. "The surge in low-value online imports has put our retailers at an unfair disadvantage. Too many of these products also fail to meet EU safety standards, putting consumers at risk."

Tourists from Chattanooga check into beach resorts in Cancun. Canadian auto parts feed factories in the American Midwest – and vice versa. Happy Hour revelers raise glasses of Mexican tequila and mezcal at bars in Seattle.

It adds up. The United States trades $1.9 trillion a year -- $5 billion a day – worth of goods and services with its neighbors, Canada and Mexico. They have supplanted China as America's top two trading partners.

Global shares were mixed on Wednesday as uncertainty persisted over conflict in the Middle East and access to the crucial Strait of Hormuz despite an initial deal to end the U.S.-Iran war.

France's CAC 40 declined 0.3% in early trading to 8,379.92, while the German DAX added 0.3% to 25,069.53. Britain's FTSE 100 dipped 0.1% to 10,484.53.

The lines are growing at Russian gas stations -- and so is the frustration and uncertainty as several months of Ukrainian attacks have set oil refineries ablaze and choked supplies for motorists across the vast country.

Fuel rationing has been introduced in many regions, with hourslong queues of cars snaking beside roads. Social media videos show drivers aghast at the lines or swearing at empty gas pumps and rising prices. The mayor of the Siberian city of Irkutsk even ordered portable toilets brought in to accommodate those in line.

The head of the European Central Bank defended its June 11 rate hike as justified to ward off real inflationary pressures and said it wasn't just a mere "insurance hike."

ECB head Christine Lagarde said Monday that without the quarter percentage-point increase, inflation could have lingered above the bank's 2% target into 2028.

Iran's president said Monday that $6 billion in frozen Iranian assets would be released by Qatar as negotiations with the United States were challenged by attacks across the Persian Gulf this weekend.

Masoud Pezeshkian's mention of the funds appear aimed at selling the Iranian public on the interim deal, particularly as its grip on the Strait of Hormuz has been challenged by efforts to open Oman's territorial waters to both inbound and outbound traffic from the Persian Gulf. Iran's attacks and threats stopped cargo ships and tankers from moving though the strait, in which about a fifth of all traded oil and natural gas passed in peacetime, creating a global energy crisis.

U.S. gasoline prices decreased an average of 49 cents a gallon in the last month as expectations rose for an end to the war with Iran. But they're not falling fast enough for President Donald Trump.

Trump, who wants to stave off the economic fallout of the war ahead of midterm elections, is now pointing at oil companies as the culprit. The president said on social media early Wednesday that he had tasked the Justice Department with investigating whether "customers are being 'gouged."