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O -D -O -O .com. Hello, and welcome to World Business Report from the BBC World Service.
I'm Roger hearing, and on this edition, what can we expect from President Trump's announcement on Wednesday on US tariffs?
Also, Argentina's poverty declines and inflation drops as President Millay found a way to turn the economy around.
We hear about Finland's boom in defence technology companies.
The war in Ukraine just kind of put everything on steroids you know things started happening a lot faster and I guess we're all aware at least here in this part of Europe of the new reality which is that the world is a lot more insecure that it used to be.
And as four new films about the Beatles are announced why after six decades do the Fab Four continue to keep such a hold on our culture.
But first it's all playing out a bit like one of those reality TV shows on which Donald Trump originally made his name.
The big decision on US tariffs to introduce reciprocal duties on major US trading partners that have their own levies on imports of US goods is made and the results will be announced later on Wednesday in a set -piece white house event that the President is calling Liberation Day.
And like those reality shows the outcome is a closely guarded secret until the big reveal.
But we're not short of rumours and unofficial briefings.
Here's White House Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt speaking today about the upcoming tariffs.
Looking ahead to tomorrow, April 2nd, 2025, will go down as one of the most important days in modern American history.
Our country has been one of the most open economies in the world and we have the consumer base hands down.
The best consumer base.
But too many foreign countries have their markets closed to our exports.
This is fundamentally unfair.
The lack of reciprocity contributes to our large and persistent annual trade deficit that's gutted our industries and hollowed out key workforces.
But those days of America, beginning tomorrow, being ripped off are over.
Caroline Levy, White House Press Secretary.
Well we don't know what's going to be in the announcement as I said but there have been plenty of reports and rumors and briefings going on, I ask for the latest from the BBC's New York business correspondent, Michelle Flurry.
So when Donald Trump rolls out his new tariffs, Roger, they'll go into effect right away.
That's according to White House spokeswoman, Carolyn Levitt.
But here's the thing, we don't actually know what to expect.
We don't know which countries will be affected.
Will it be everyone or just a select few?
We also don't know what the tariff rate will be.
could it be 10 percent 20 percent or maybe even 25 percent like the tariffs he's already imposed on steel aluminum and cars and this lack of clarity it's it's really one of the reasons that we're seeing the markets so anxious you've got the S &P it actually climbed finished higher at the end of the trading session but volatility has been the word on Wall Street in part because people just are kind of waiting to find out what happens you've also got political leaders who are nervous, they don't know how they're going to have to respond.
Whether or not they will have to do sort of tit for tat measures, potentially increasing the risk of a global all -out trade war.
On the business front, if you talk to the business community, there is also concern there.
I mean, it's very hard to plan for the future and make big investment decisions when you don't know what's coming down the pipeline, as I've been finding out by speaking to some local businesses here in New York.
It will be Liberation Day because we'll be taking in large amounts of money for our country.
April 2nd, the day Donald Trump says the US will impose reciprocal tariffs on countries that sell more goods to the US than they buy.
But the looming tariffs may not be as far reaching as once thought.
We may take less than what they're charging because they've charged us so much I don't think they could take it.
The White House is now focused on what it's calling the Dirty 15 – a select group of countries with the most tariffs on US goods or other trade barriers.
Among them, China, Mexico and the EU.
Where are you right now?
I'm in the Valle de la Marne in Champagne, actually.
For US wine sellers, these are anxious times.
European alcohol is already facing a tit -for -tat threat of 200 per cent duties.
So this is one of your suppliers you're visiting?
One of our importers has organized a trip to visit a few of their producers across Champagne.
Josh Cohen is the co -founder of Flatiron, Wines and Spirits.
How much of the conversation has been dominated by tariff talk?
Yeah, there's been a fair bit of talk.
Obviously it would be devastating to pretty much everybody on this trip.
Explain to me, why would it be so devastating?
Well, the trip has been organised by a very small importer and their entire business, anybody that they employ, all the taxes they pay are supported by wines that they import from France.
The newfound uncertainty has led some customers to stockpile their favorite tipple.
Some champagne collectors have bought very deeply Burgundy and Barolo.
Tonight, the worst day for stocks this year.
Americans are increasingly worried.
Even if Trump's duties are more narrowly focused, his tariffs have been a tough sell.
Recession fears rising.
But the President shows no sign of backing down.
He believes America's enemies and allies have treated the US unfairly.
Look, our country's been ripped off by everybody… He's betting he'll win over voters by bending global trade rules to bring back jobs.
People are slow at accepting things that maybe they would rather not hear.
Wilbur Ross had a front -row seat to tariffs as US Commerce Secretary during President Trump's first term.
People should have known that something like this was coming because he's been talking about it for many, many years.
Fresh sausage and avocado.
In New York's Little Italy, it's lunchtime at Di Paolo's Fine Foods, a family -run shop that's been selling Italian staples for over a century.
Inside, the cash registers haven't stopped ringing.
Customers crowd the counter, stocking up on the shop's staple cheeses, Parmesan, Pecorino, Provolone, all imported from across the Atlantic.
Owner Lou Di Paolo fears these products could soon get a lot more expensive.
We are concerned, concerned to the point that it's certainly going to affect our business.
But despite his business being caught in Trump's trade wars, he supports the president, telling me the pain from tariffs is a price worth paying.
The United States, in my opinion, has been giving away the store for many, many years.
The president will be hoping American businesses, along with major trading partners, will be just as understanding when he unveils more tariffs.
Michel Fleury reporting.
Well, one of the aspects of all this, and particularly the lead -up to the tariff announcement, has been some turbulence on markets.
U .S. and global share markets bouncing up and down really over the past week as investors struggle to work out the consequences.
Let's get the latest now from Aayoko Yoshio -ka, Portfolio Consulting Director at Wealth Enhancement.
Aayoko, thanks for being with us here on World Business Report.
Well, how are the markets stacked right now?
So the markets had a good day today.
They were up at the end of the day, at the end of the session, up four -tenths of 1%.
So there was a sense, I suppose, of perhaps people thinking that the tariff announcements won't be as damaging as was feared, because we certainly saw that fear last week.
Absolutely. Friday was a tough day on markets, where the overall market was down over 2%.
And I do believe that there are participants in the market who think that tomorrow's announcements will be a clearing event in which we'll have some certainty around all of this uncertainty regarding tariffs.
So uncertainty more important really than the consequences or potentially a trade war?
I think having some clarity so that businesses can plan and provide good guidance for their outlooks and plan for however they are going to run their business in the future is going to be very tantamount for you just having that clarity going forward and I I think one of the interesting things is all coming amidst a ream of data really in the last day or so which suggests the economy maybe slowing down anyway I mean job openings are dropping layoffs rising there's some signs that things are slowing down absolutely I think a lot of this uncertainty is causing many business leaders to slow things
down so that they can plan for the higher price increases, and then labour gets caught in the crosshairs.
So there is a lot of fear in markets.
And potentially, I guess, informing what the FED decides to do next time it thinks about interest rates.
Absolutely. It seems like it's been a little bit of a game of chicken between the President and the FED who's going to blink first. We'd like to all see lower interest rates, but we also don't want to see a slower growing economy in order to get those lower rates.
Ayaku, thanks for being with us.
Ayaku Yoshioka there of wealth enhancement.
Well, of course, one of the big issues is the businesses in the US that are trying to work out whether they're going to win or lose from the imposition of tariffs on their imports and, of course, potentially retaliatory tariffs on their exports.
So ask Kim Glass, president and CEO of the National Council of Textile Organizations in Washington, what she'd like to hear from President Trump's announcement.
The world is waiting for the announcement tomorrow in the Rose Garden at 4 PM.
Our U .S. textile industry has been reaching out to President Trump and top administration officials so that they understand our supply chain.
So we're asking President Trump to help ensure that our industry can grow jobs here in the United States.
But that requires the preservation of duty free trade between Mexico and Canada and levying significant penalty tariffs on trade predators like China and Vietnam.
So we're asking for his urgent help because we believe if done the right way, his tariff policies could help onshore production.
Well, let me just, just take that apart for a moment for people obviously not aware.
So what you're saying is you'd like ideally tariff free trade with Mexico and Canva?
That is correct. So just some history here.
The US textile industry makes primarily fibers, yarns and fabrics.
A lot of our finishing meaning the cutting and sewing operations have been offshore to other countries like China.
So we simply don't have the cutting and sewing capability to absorb 52 % of what we export to Mexico primarily or Canada.
Mexico often uses US fabric and makes it into a pair of blue jeans by cutting and sewing, and those jeans come back to the United States duty free under the Free Trade Agreement.
So if you penalize Mexico and Canada where we get certain component parts that we don't make here.
You actually are hurting the U .S. textile industry and the 471 ,000 direct jobs that we support.
One of the complaints of course about people who are saying that that these kind of tariffs needs to come on onto countries like Mexico is that a lot of things come through Mexico from China.
So in fact what you're saying is that you need to work with Mexico.
But if what's coming through Mexico is from China that defeats the object, doesn't it?
No. So we are for, if you want to penalize trade from Mexico, go after that trade that is using Chinese components, illegally tranship products through Mexico.
We agree, tariff that to the maximum extent possible, but for items being assembled, made of US content, that needs to be preserved to help ensure that our industry is not closing any more factories and, in fact, growing jobs.
We've lost 28 textile mills over the last 22 months.
This has been significant for our industry.
So we're trying to educate the administration and members of Congress that if we had cut -and -sew capabilities here in the United States, you know, that would be a huge opportunity but all a lot much of that has gone offshore.
About two percent of the apparel that we actually buy at retail is made in the United States because that cutting and sewing capability largely has gone offshore so if we lose our export markets we lose a critical key feed stock for the US supply chain and our customers.
And that was Kim Glass of the National Council of Textile organizations in the US.
You're with World Business Report from the BBC World Service.
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Now, Argentina is South America's second largest economy, but for decades it's been a byword for corruption and chaos with three figure inflation and an almost worthless currency.
Javier Millet, the president elected in 2023 was widely mocked for his Trumpian rhetoric and promised to take a chainsaw to an oversized and inefficient administration.
But has it actually worked?
Figures show Argentina's poverty rate which was at just over 40 % when he took power surged to 53 % in the first part of 2024 and then dropped just just over 38%.
annual inflation plummeted to 66 .9 % last month, compared to over 276 % a year earlier.
So what's going on?
With me now is Firming Coote, the journalist and commentator in Buenos Aires.
Firming, thanks for being with us.
How did this drop in poverty come about?
Well, thanks for the invite first of all.
Great to be here. So the figures are quite impressive.
We are at 38 .1 % of the in Argentina is under the poverty line.
We used to be at 52 .9, last year, so the drop is definitely quite significant.
The main reason of this is the drop on the inflation rate.
As you well said, Argentina is quite famous around the world because of its really skyrocketing inflation rates.
We used to have figures around 300 % a few years back.
Millet definitely took a big drop into that.
The change saw, as you There's a few things to be in mind as well.
The inflation index in Argentina is contested by some economists, so it's not perfect.
There are a few figures in there that could be challenged.
For example, the consumer price index is largely based on a basket of basic goods that comes from 2004.
So, there are researchers that say that nowadays this has changed quite significantly, so we need an upgrade of this of this basket so we should take a kind of a pinch of salt while while looking at those figures well i was going to say the filming does it actually feel like that because i've spoken to yourself as well but others as well uh in the past who said you know it's just incredible how you have to go out and the money you've got in the morning is worth nothing in the evening has that changed well you're very right not that much the feeling is still an economy in quite a big of a mess.
As you may know Argentina is actually negotiating a new deal with the IMF right now and Milay is traveling to the US right now to agree on those details.
But the economy is still on a very unstable time with the currency still being quite weak and subject to falling pressures as well.
And it doesn't feel that the economy is doing well.
The poverty levels are still quite high.
Thirty -eight percent is still quite significant.
And if you go out and you speak to people, they will tell you that they are not necessarily better off compared to last year.
But, Furman, is it what President Millet is doing, is it having an effect?
Because it seems previous administrations didn't even achieve this.
Well, the roots of the problem are quite deep in the economy of Argentina.
We are basically not exporting as much as we should.
And so, we don't have enough foreign currency coming in in the country.
So, the reforms that Malay are doing are our baby steps compared to the changes that Argentina need to do.
But they are definitely taking shape.
I mean, it's something that nobody believed that he would be doing anything as you well say.
It was kind of a crazy guy with the change.
So, what we are seeing now with Elon Musk basically.
But the fact is that while we do have some initial results, but yeah, because one year in office he's still got three more.
I was going to say, see what happens next early days but Fermin thank you so much for updating us on that.
Fermin Coop there. Thanks for having me.
Good to have you there.
Now Finland has been seeing a boom in defence technology companies since the start of the war in Ukraine.
And amid the current geopolitical tensions between President Trump's administration and the European Union there's a renewed focus on the role of the tech sector in helping.
Finland is trying desperately to improve its defence capabilities.
Maddy Savage reports from Helsinki.
That's the sound of a J -16 fighter jet flying above a mountain range.
But it's not a real plane.
It's a pilot training simulator developed by Vario, a big name among the hundreds of companies in Finland that help countries protect themselves from war.
The firm's CEO is Timur Tuikkinen.
The war in Ukraine just kind of put everything on steroids, you know things started happening a lot faster And I guess we all aware at least here in this part of Europe of the new Reality which is that the world is a lot more insecure that it used to be Finland with a population of just 5 million has 368 defense tech companies according to research for Tessie a state funded venture capital company 40 % are startups and scale -ups, with many growing at rates of 30 to 40%, especially if their tools can also be used in other industries.
Helsinki is now among the top five cities in Europe for defence -tech investment and Vario's CEO says he's expecting the scene to keep expanding due to the current tensions between Europe and the US.
We are today supplying more than 80 synthetic training programmes across NATO, many of them in Europe, and we definitely have seen over the last month or two much more ambitious plans in ramping up synthetic training for various things in European countries.
Finland borders Russia, and the government here spent a greater proportion of its budget on defence than many other European countries, even before the war in Ukraine.
There's also military conscription here.
Many experts believe these factors have encouraged Finnish entrepreneurs and investors to focus on defence tech rather than other fast growing industries like energy and financial technologies.
There's a phrase I like to leverage, which is the tyranny of geography.
The closer you are to a threat, the more likely you are to perceive it as more apparent and indeed more existential.
That's Nicholas Nelson, a US defence tech investor based in Europe.
They also have a memory of the Winter War, which transpired during World War II, where they were invaded by the Soviet Union.
Another factor behind Finland's defense tech success is its strong startup ecosystem.
This is Maria01, a former hospital that has been transformed into the largest startup campus in the Nordics, a place where entrepreneurs, founders and others in the tech scene can collaborate.
I'm meeting Kursi Koko from Business Finland, a Finnish government agency that promotes investment and innovation.
She's the head of a $130 million program supporting defence and resilience companies.
Our current government, they are really enforcing us to this kind of public -private collaboration for supporting the research and development initiatives, especially the small, medium and start -up companies.
She says the sector is facing challenges though, like recruiting the global talent needed to help build defence tech companies in Finland.
Its salaries and weather can't usually compete with tech hubs like Silicon Valley or even London, although she says it's still attractive due to its flat hierarchies and culture of innovation.
Another issue is one affecting all defence tech businesses eyeing European expansion.
A fragmented market.
Here's Nicholas Nelson again.
So different requirements on how to do business there, different security frameworks, different rules and restrictions on how they establish and how they work with various ministries of defence.
It makes it a less attractive proposition.
Business Finland says it is helping to support start -ups with internationalisation strategies.
And in the last few weeks the EU's promised to simplify regulations and encourage better cooperation between member states.
another sign of geopolitical tensions fuelling growth in this booming sector.
Maddy Savage reporting from Helsinki.
It's more than 60 years since the Beatles arrived in the US and became a global music phenomenon and more than half a century since they broke up.
But they've never really left public consciousness in music and in film.
The guitar's alright for a hobby but you never make a living at it.
I'm going to start a rock and roll group.
I'm done. Oh. Oh I believe in yesterday...
When did you write that?
I didn't write it, Paul McCartney wrote it.
The Beatles. Who? And they'd never heard of The Beatles.
Of course that was the film yesterday which the conceit was that they never existed.
Now you also heard Backbeat and Nowhere Boy.
But now there is another movie or rather four more movies on the way.
Paul Meskell and Barry Keegan have been confirmed as part of the all -star line -up.
We're gonna play members of The Beatles in those films. It's all announced at the CinemaCon convention in Las Vegas on Monday.
Let's talk to Steven Cockcroft a mega Beatles fan and hosts a podcast called Nothing Is Real.
Steven, thanks for being with us.
I mean, it does seem extraordinary that 60 years on, they're just seemed to be at the forefront of, well, certainly film almost, rather than music now, but still so important.
I think that's true.
I think what you've said, they're more than music.
They've transcended just being musical artists and they've moved into a different level, almost. People are fascinated by the story of those four individuals as much as they are enraptured by the music.
It's the relationships within the band that I think play a large part in keeping them in that public consciousness.
But most of the people who are going to see these films, well they won't have been alive when The Beatles were actually playing music as The Beatles.
Many of them will never have seen the band playing at all.
Why does it appeal to the new generations as well?
Well I think what happens is that each generation that comes along rediscovers the band So I'm a second generation fan, I was born in 1963 I don't have any memory of The Beatles when they were still a sort of a live and going concern But I discovered Beatles records in my parents record collection People discovered in their older brothers and sisters record collections modern bands reference the music of The Beatles, and I think the story itself as I say it just there's something about that those four individuals that captures the imagination.
But so much has been written, and so much has been depicted on stage and on film I mean is there a risk that it's just becoming mythologized that what we're seeing, well I mean something like Yesterday was a complete fantasy of course that film, but is this all unreal now perhaps taken on whole new life that was never there I think that is the danger I think that is very much the danger the Beatles are very good as an organization at guarding the myth so a lot of what you know about the Beatles what do you think you know about the Beatles is actually not quite the whole truth or it's a sanitized
version and I see I was gonna say and also that the two of them are a horrible thing to say safely dead but they are they're that they're not they can't contribute to this anymore.
They can contribute, but the setup, the sort of the umbrella organization of Apple, which looks after all of the sort of Beatles merchandising, and basically the whole story and anything to do with the Beatles, very much still controlled by Paul and Ringo who are still alive, and the estates of Lennon and Harrison.
You know, it's a very hands on control.
And for John Lennon and George Harrison, it's their sons who are now involved.
And people are going to watch these four films, do you think so?
Well, I'm absolutely intrigued as to what they're going to do here.
Are we going to have a...
You know the idea, Sam Mendes has said, this each film, we'll look at the story from the perspective of a different character.
Ah, that's the interesting thing.
That's something that hasn't been done before and that's something perhaps worth watching for.
Thanks so much for being with us here on World Business Report.
Asking the right questions can greatly impact your future, especially when it comes to your finances.
So if you're looking for a financial advisor you can trust, certified financial planner professionals are committed to acting in your best interest. That's why it's got to be a CFP.
Find your CFP professional at letsmakeplan .org.
