for several German ministries and, from 1978 to 1981, in the office of German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt. He held positions in the Permanent Representative Office of the Federal Republic of Germany in East Berlin from 1981 to 1985. In the 1980s, Steinbrück was the chief of staff to the Minister President of North Rhine-Westphalia, Johannes Rau. In 1993, he became the State Minister of Economic Affairs and Infrastructure in the state of Schleswig-Holstein. He then returned to North Rhine-Westphalia, where he became the Minister of Economic Affairs and Infrastructure in 1998 and Finance Minister in 2000. Minister President of North Rhine-Westphalia, 2002–2005 From 2002 to 2005 Steinbrück served as the eighth Minister President (Ministerpräsident or governor) of North Rhine-Westphalia. He headed a coalition government between the SPD and the Green Party. In December 2002, Steinbrück accompanied Chancellor Gerhard Schröder on a visit to China for meetings with President of the People's Republic of China Jiang Zemin and Premier Zhu Rongji. In 2003, Steinbrück and Roland Koch, the Christian Democrat premier of Hesse, together drew up a plan to reduce tax breaks and subsidies, including those on coal. The subsidies were a particularly sensitive issue in North Rhine-Westphalia, where most of the coal mines were located then. Nevertheless, Steinbrück and Koch agreed that all subsidies were to be reduced by 12 percent over several years. Steinbrück was a supporter of the so-called "Agenda 2010". In the state election on 22 May 2005, Steinbrück's SPD lost to the Christian democratic (CDU) opposition. This loss also had consequences for federal politics: then German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who already was enfeebled by weak opinion polls and criticism within his own party, announced plans to call an early federal election for the Bundestag. This resulted in the 2005 federal election four months later, after which Angela Merkel became Chancellor for the first time. Federal Minister of Finance, 2005–2009 After the 2005 federal election, SPD and CDU formed a Grand Coalition under the leadership of new Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU). Peer Steinbrück became finance minister of Germany in November 2005. He was charged with reducing Germany's budget deficit, curbing public debt and introducing changes in the taxation system. Following his initiative, Germany introduced a flat rate withholding tax of 25 percent on private income from capital and capital gains, with the aim of preventing tax evasion. He oversaw and orchestrated the regulatory and fiscal efforts to