Obama awards Merkel Washington’s highest civilian award

German Chancellor Angela Merkel will be honored on Tuesday at the White House with America's highest civilian award.

Merkel, 56, on Monday night had dinner with President Barack Obama at a Georgetown restaurant, a day before the official business ended with the White House ceremony.

I'm sure they will discuss the range of foreign policy issues that are of common interest to both countries, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters on Monday.

“It is also expected that the two leaders would discuss efforts to bolster recovery from the global recession, an issue that both the countries are addressing in different ways,” Carney added.

Critics, earlier, said that Germany should increase its domestic expenditure to ease the imbalance for the quick recovery from recession as Germany continued to expand its trade surplus.

Merkel supports tough austerity measures for European Union colleagues. Germany recently decided to close down all its nuclear power plants in the future in the wake of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami that caused reactor meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

Obama’s administration has put forth an energy policy that will help to increase domestic oil as well as nuclear power production, and will also help to develop solar and wind energy production to compete in a growing global market.