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loyalty program subject to terms and conditions details at lowes .com slash terms subject to change my watch says we've gone three miles this app is like having a personal trainer yeah but those apps collect a lot of your personal data aren't you worried really that's creepy how do I stop that you should go
to privacy .ca .gov to learn about your privacy rights and get on the best path to protect your privacy you think they could help us get up this next hill one step at a time Californians have the strongest privacy protections in the country.
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Learn more at privacy .ca .gov.
This is Andrew Peach with World Business Report.
Good to have your company.
The U .S. Supreme Court upholds its law banning TikTok, but Donald Trump says he's going to have another look.
On behalf of everyone at TikTok, I want to thank President Trump for his commitment to work with us to find a solution that keeps TikTok available in the United States.
We'll hear how budget cuts in Argentina have delivered the first fiscal surplus in 16 years and what might happen to US work permits for people escaping violence, oppression or natural disasters.
They want to end, on day one, these processes that have allowed for hundreds of thousands of people to come into the country.
First, on Sunday, TikTok will be banned in the US.
The Supreme Court has upheld a law passed by Congress imposing the ban unless TikTok is sold to an American company.
An ultimatum in response to fears about Chinese control of the app through its parent company, ByteDance.
Donald Trump is back in the White House on Monday and here's the message from the CEO of TikTok to the president -elect.
We have been fighting to protect the constitutional right to free speech for the more than 170 million Americans who use our platform every day.
On behalf of everyone at TikTok and all our users across the country, I want to thank President Trump for his commitment to work with us to find a solution that keeps TikTok available.
Donald Trump has said he'll make a decision about not only small businesses, but big corporations as well.
Because TikTok, it's like a community, right?
And this affects us, everybody.
Adam Siegel from the Council on Foreign Relations is live with me.
Adam, thank you for being with us.
How did TikTok find itself in this sort of struggle between the US and China?
Well, almost from day one, when TikTok started growing in popularity in the United States, many national security -oriented congresspeople began worrying about the data that it was collecting and its ability to influence the political debates in the United States.
Obviously, there are many users, many content creators who are prolific on TikTok in the US.
From Sunday, when it's banned, what does it mean?
Probably on Sunday, we're not going to see that much of a dramatic change.
You know, people will still be able to access it.
But the question is kind of over the week as American companies that host the data or provide support to the apps in their stores, if they refuse to continue providing those services, we'll probably start seeing some degrading of services over time and people will find the app harder and harder to use.
So U .S. creators can continue to upload their stuff, but no one will see it?
I think they'll be able to upload, you know, again, maybe Sunday, Monday, but then they'll start having more difficulties inside the United States.
Right. Now, we heard the TikTok CEO there, who's pretty hopeful Trump's going to overturn it.
Donald Trump's been on a long journey about this.
He used to be no fan at all of TikTok.
And then more recently, he's been speaking up for it.
We know it played a part in his re -election campaign.
We know the TikTok bosses have been to see him at Mar -a -Lago.
Yeah, I mean, his change in attitude towards it about it is, you know, correlates pretty highly against, you know, conservative use of the app and Trump's influence and popularity on it, as well as personal connections to people who have invested in it.
I also think he probably thinks he can use it in some grand bargain with China about trade.
we saw Trump act similarly towards Huawei the Chinese telecommunication company which the U .S.
has long set as a security risk and Trump in that instance also seemed willing to make a deal that involved Huawei and trade.
It's also a lot of people who love it so actually overturning the ban being the savior of TikTok in the U .S.
might be pretty popular.
I think that's right.
I think, you know, the U .S.
government has not done a great job of explaining to the American people what the security threats and risks truly are.
And, you know, we saw with a lot of Americans this week rushing to use Chinese apps, like literally inside of China apps, a little red book and LemonAid in a kind of mocking way that they're not really convinced that it's a risk.
and, you know, they're pushing back against it.
Well, it might just have got to a point where it's become such a part of people's lives that they don't want to give it up, regardless of what the risk is or isn't.
I think that's right.
I mean, you know, if you already probably think that your data is being misused by lots of people and this is such an important part of your life, it's part of your livelihood, the risk doesn't seem that great.
Adam, thank you. Adam Siegel from the Council on Foreign Relations.
Next to Anne Kokus, who's the CKM Professor at the Miller Center and Professor of Media Studies at the University of Virginia.
Anne's book is called How China is Winning the Battle for Digital Sovereignty.
Anne, thank you for being with us.
That's exactly what this is about.
What is the risk? What are the security issues here with TikTok?
We seem to have lost our connection to Anne, so we'll try and get her back and talk to her a little bit later in the programme.
We'll come back to Anne in a little while here on World Business Report.
Chris Lowe is Chief Economist of FHN Financial.
Hi, Chris. I said her email right now.
Yeah. Is Chris with us?
I'm right here. There we are, right now.
Give us your take on what's happening with TikTok, because actually you've got some pretty close connections with it.
Well, that's right.
Yeah, my daughter is in digital ad sales with TikTok, and she's also a big content creator.
So it's two significant income streams for her.
We've had conversations about all this stuff because I work for a big bank in the US and we're actually banned from we cannot have tick tock on any of our devices.
Our compliance people see it as a significant security threat.
So it really does come down to, I think, whether, you know, what you're doing in social media outweighs your privacy concerns.
And give us a sense of how this is being received.
We sort of get the politics of it.
But for tens of millions of Americans, especially young Americans, for whom TikTok is part of their lives, it is for my teenage children here.
What do they think about it being banned and the argument about it?
I think that the real thing they would miss is the sense of community for many of them.
This is where they connect with people and they connect on a daily basis and that connection would be lost.
And they say that you just don't get it at Meta or on X because the algorithm isn't as good.
It's not as good at matching you with people who really share your interests.
And, you know, as a business person, really share an interest in whatever it is you're trying to sell.
We'll come back for a little bit more with you, Chris, if we can, in a few minutes on the program.
Other stories to discuss shortly.
But I do want to go to Anne Cocos now, the CKEN professor at the Miller Center, professor of media studies at the University of Virginia.
And Anne, what I'd really like you to add into the conversation is what the risk is.
What are people worried about with TikTok?
So they're worried about several things.
The first is the large -scale data gathering and thinking about the ways in which it's possible to target individuals, to target communities and mis - and disinformation.
There are also concerns about issues of contested logistics.
So when we think about the U .S.
and our relationship with China, the ability to control and have a lot of authority over important communications platforms is really essential.
And then we can also think about these questions of economic competitiveness.
TikTok outcompeting U .S.-based platforms because of their ability to, because of ByteDance's ability to gather data in both the United States and in China.
And the difference between TikTok and other social media platforms, you know, Chris was just saying, well, maybe the algorithm works rather better for users.
But I guess the difference is it's owned by China or perceived to be connected to the Chinese state.
Well, I think both of those things are connected because of ByteDance's headquarters in China.
They're able to gather data in China through the Chinese platform Douyin as well as in the United States and other countries through TikTok, which contributes to being able to develop a more robust algorithm that includes a larger array of a larger population.
So that's an important thing to note here when we're thinking about the economic competitiveness argument.
But then also the ownership structure is really key here because ByteDance owns, because TikTok is a subsidiary of ByteDance, unlike U .S.
companies that are based here.
Now, the important red herring to note here, though, is that because of the lack of kind of robust data broker laws, meaning the limitations on the ability to sell data, there are still ways for other firms to gather data from U .S.
platforms. Do you think in the end it's possible to ban something that people are so keen to have?
Will Donald Trump in the end want to be the person who stopped the ban but used it as a lever to get something else?
I mean I think this is really the million dollar question or probably more dollars than that given the money at stake.
But I think that there is the possibility of banning it but if there's the political will is another huge question.
There has been reporting that Shochu, the CEO of TikTok, will be an honoured guest at the inauguration gala.
That will be interesting to see.
So how those relationships all play out within the U .S.
governmental context, I think, is really important to look at as we move forward.
It's been around a while.
So if it's so clever and the algorithm is harvesting all this data, you'd think it would have been used against us by now if there's any great problem with it.
Well, I think there's a really big question about what does it mean to be used against different democracies.
We've seen, for example, a huge amount of fractiousness in democratic elections.
if we look to the case of Romania, if we look to the recent US election, if we look to reports on discussions about Israel and Palestine on the app.
So what we can think about in terms of mis - and disinformation or the erosion of democratic norms through the social media platform, I think is something that's important to look at.
And thank you. That's Anne Kokus.
This is World Business Report with Andrew Peach here on the BBC World Series.
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Wolfpack, gear up, stand out Next to Argentina, which has reported a fiscal surplus for the first time in 16 years as a result of comprehensive budget cuts implemented by the president, Javier Malay He took office just over a year ago, promising to cut government spending He's certainly done that He
said the populist policies of previous left -wing governments had created a cycle of economic decline and hyperinflation He sacked thousands of public sector workers.
He's cut subsidies to gas, electricity, bus fares and university education.
Amy Boothe is executive editor of the Buenos Aires Herald and live on World Business Support with me.
Amy, I suppose he could say, well, this is what I said I would do and I've achieved exactly what I set out to.
Yeah, and in fact, that is what he's arguing because Millet has long argued that Argentina's problem lies in the economy and that if Argentina can adopt these sort of more free market policies, more economically orthodox policies, then almost everything else will sort of right itself.
It's almost a throwback to neoliberalism in some ways.
Right. But the effect of it is to throw a lot of Argentinians into poverty and to cause all kinds of problems for them.
Yeah, absolutely. And that's, in fact, something that Millet was quite vocal and quite explicit about, even from the day that he took office.
You know, so quite unusually in his inauguration speech, he told people that they should brace for a wave of, I believe he said, around 40 percent inflation a month back in December of 2023.
And he did, in fact, go on to his policies brought about a recession which hit Argentines very hard last year.
You know, we were seeing very high poverty rates, certainly in the first half of 2024.
as Argentine society sort of bore the brunt.
And I think the question now is how that is evolving.
So at least officials are starting to say that they're seeing poverty figures come down a bit because we're recovering from that recession.
But I really think the question is how Argentina's economy is going to perform in 2025 because there's still a lot we just don't know.
And what does he do next?
What does he say his plan is now the fiscal surplus is there?
So he has said that he's going to proceed to a second phase of state cuts.
Millais famously campaigned with a chainsaw at campaign rallies to show just how much he was going to cut back on the state, which he sort of portrayed as this corrupt actor full of people living on unjustly claimed taxpayer dollars or pesos, I should say.
and you know he called that his chainsaw plan and he said that it's now time for the deep chainsaw we don't know exactly what that's going to look like but in the past few weeks we've seen some really aggressive cuts for example to the human rights secretariat which does very important work on argentina's
dictatorship so that's been pretty disturbing amy thank you amy booth from From the Buenos Aires Herald, live with us now.
There's a coal snap in Washington.
It's going to feel like minus 15 there later.
That means Donald Trump's inauguration is now indoors rather than on the steps of the Capitol.
The last time that happened was when Ronald Reagan began his second term in 1985.
Hundreds of thousands of people were expected to turn up to see the ceremony, but there will still be lots of private parties in Washington and elsewhere.
This year, the level of donations for all of this is bigger than ever.
Let's talk to Alice Holstein of Politico about it.
Alice, thanks for being with us on World Business Report.
How is all this paid for?
Yes. So corporations are pouring unprecedented sums of money into the transition, despite the fact that, as you just mentioned, it's now set to be a much smaller indoor affair than originally planned.
And it is far beyond what the inaugural committee for Trump received when he was taking the oath of office for the first time around.
And even that was a record at the time.
And you'd think, you know, joking by what happened on the 6th of January four years ago, that big corporations would have wanted nothing to do with him ever again.
So we have seen a real turnabout in corporate America where companies that made very public pledges not to give money to people associated with January 6th, which of course, you know, Trump, you know, encouraged lawmakers to refuse to certify the results of the 2020 election.
And yet here we are.
Some of those same corporations today are just giving upwards of a million dollars each to Trump's inauguration, which it really shines a light on how few guardrails there are around donations to the inaugural committee, unlike campaign donations, which have much stricter limits and disclosure requirements.
You know, we really don't have any limit on the money companies can give.
And a lot of folks, you know, both some members of Congress and outside experts think this is a real opportunity for corruption and influence peddling.
Obviously, you know, cozying up to the new president carries all sorts of advantages, potentially.
It's a huge thing. People are familiar with the outside version because we've seen it so many times, but there are also lavish balls that take place inside or costing loads of money.
Who's on the list of donors?
Do we know? Oh, yes.
And so, companies familiar to many, the biggest tech companies in the world, the CEOs of Uber and OpenAI gave money, big car companies, Toyota, Ford, General Motors, the drug maker Pfizer, and we're also seeing, and this is new, a lot of those I just mentioned are not new, but what's new is the vast
amount of money that's coming from the cryptocurrency sector at a time when those companies are really working in Washington to make sure they are not heavily regulated.
Will they be disappointed that the thing has been scaled back or does that not really matter.
So this is what's being scaled back and moved indoors is just the taking the official oath of office.
And so I doubt these wealthy folks were eager to be out in the cold anyways.
And like you said, there will still be plenty of lavish parties, not just on Monday, but all weekend leading up to it all around Washington.
Alice, thank you very much indeed.
Back to Chris Lowe now, chief economist at FHN Financial in New York.
It's the last working day of the Biden administration ends on Sunday.
The sort of the narrative we've become used to is that Joe Biden was voted out of office on the basis of the performance of the economy.
And, you know, a lot of voters will have felt the pressures of inflation and felt all of that.
Actually, in terms of the markets, they've done pretty well under Joe Biden, haven't they?
Well, that's right.
Trump is inheriting a strong economy and very buoyant stock market.
GDP growth was 3 % last year after inflation.
It's going to be close to that this year.
Stock market is up 40 % over the four years that Biden was in office.
It's a tremendous performance.
Now, of course, part of that is because there were big tax cuts right before the pandemic, and those tax cuts remain in place now.
Now, corporate profit margins were wide, and that's one of the reasons stocks did so well.
So it's hard to say necessarily who deserves the credit, but there's no question.
You can't really blame Joe Biden for a weak economy.
It's strong. Would you expect it to get even stronger and the markets to do even better now Donald Trump's back?
Well, it might do. You know, part of this is going to be tricky.
And in particular, there's been enormous government spending in the last couple of years of, well, particularly the last year of Trump because of the pandemic, but throughout the four years of Biden as well.
And if Trump is really serious about weaning the economy off of that public sector money, then there's going to have to be a new push for growth in the private sector.
It could be a tricky transition.
Just a quick word about growth in Britain, which has been the focus of political attention.
Actually, the FTSE 100 got to its highest ever level.
Yeah, which is also very interesting.
The economy they're not doing as well.
But, of course, profits are doing just fine or well enough anyway to lift stocks.
And I think that a big part of that is because UK exports are doing better than they were last year.
Chris, thanks ever so much.
That's Chris Lowe from FHN Financial in New York.
Now, immigration is a high profile public policy issue in many countries, including in the US.
The Biden administration, which has just a couple of days left now, has used its immigration power for something known as humanitarian parole.
The idea is to provide work authority in the U .S.
for people who are escaping violence or oppression or natural disasters in their home country.
But what might happen next with the new administration?
Well, my colleague Elizabeth Trovel from our U .S.
Partners Marketplace is here to explain.
This is the story of a big sister, Marilyn, and a little brother, Jonathan.
Both were university students back home.
In Nicaragua, universities have been a target of the violent authoritarian government.
We're not using their family name because of the risk of persecution.
There's no freedom of expression in Nicaragua, says Marilyn, and no job prospects.
So two years ago, when President Biden opened up humanitarian parole for Nicaraguans, their stepdad, a U .S.
citizen, sponsored them.
Within weeks, they were on a plane to Houston, and within months, she and her brother landed jobs as custodians at a local school district with their work permits.
They had never worked cleaning jobs before, but the pay was decent, $12 an hour, more than salaries in Nicaragua.
And she felt good about making her way.
Humanitarian parole has been a useful tool to getting fleeing migrants quickly into U .S.
jobs that are often low -paying and hard to fill Food production assistant forklift operator Gardner In her office at the Refugee Resettlement Agency, YMCA International Services in Houston, Joanne Pantaleon reads off a list of jobs filled by her Cuban, Afghan, and Ukrainian clients on humanitarian parole Security
guard, cashier, Uber, driver, packer, stocker, babysitter.
Just last year, her organization helped around 1 ,800 Cubans, Afghans and Ukrainians with humanitarian parole get work permits.
It's immediate access to employment.
They're making money for themselves.
They're contributing to pay their bills.
And in the last couple of years, she says those work permits have been processed more quickly.
Just the fact that it only takes a month and a half or two months to get it from the moment you submit your application, it's a vast improvement.
Humanitarian parole has been used in unprecedented ways during the Biden administration, though it's actually been around for decades since before the U .S.
had an asylum and refugee system.
But a big difference between today and back then is...
Congress used to pass Adjustment Acts.
Kathleen Bush -Joseph with the Migration Policy Institute says Congress used to recognize that people couldn't go home for humanitarian reasons.
So they'd say, We're going to set up a process for you to be able to become a lawful permanent residence and perhaps eventually a citizen.
Congress hasn't had the political will to do that in recent years.
And humanitarian parole is both fleeting and discretionary.
So when Donald Trump takes office, His officials have said that they think the Biden administration's use of parole has been illegal and they want to end on day one these processes that have allowed for hundreds of thousands of people to come into the country.
And even absent Trump administration policy changes, parole is expiring for many.
Some have been able to apply for asylum or temporary protected status.
Others will return home or stay in the U .S.
undocumented. As for Jonathan and Marilyn from Nicaragua, their pathway to stay is their dad, who has a green card.
But because Jonathan was under 21 when he entered and Marilyn was older, they're in different immigration lines facing different visa wait times.
He gets to stay in Texas, but she has to go back to Nicaragua and she's afraid.
For now, she's had to turn down a promotion at work as she makes plans to return to Nicaragua.
But she's grateful for the two years she was allowed to live in the U .S.
Unlike in Nicaragua, here she's been able to make some money, she says.
And she's actually felt free.
There's more about today's stories online at bbc .com slash business From me, Andrew Peach and the team on World Business Report Thank you for being with us
