This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.
Did you know women are more likely than men to develop dry eyes, which may be due to hormonal changes during the menstrual cycle or after menopause and the use of oral contraceptives.
Give your dry, burning, or irritated eyes the daily refresh with Refresh Optive Mega 3 Lubricant Eyedrops, a preservative free formula that provides fast acting lasting relief.
Refresh Optif Mega 3 is safe to use as often as needed find refresh online or in the iDrop aisle at all major retailers.
You know some people say that Odoo business management software is like fertilizer, the way it promotes growth and all.
But other people say Odoo is like a magic beanstalk because it grows with your company and is also magically affordable.
And there's some people who would even say Odoo's individual software programs come together to build the perfect suite like building blocks.
Well, Odoo is all of these things.
Fertilizer. Magic beanstalk.
Building blocks for business.
So sign up now at Odoo .com.
Odoo .com. Hello, and welcome to World Business Report from the BBC World Service.
I'm Rahul Tandon. On this edition, is India about to drop its tariffs on US products and we look at the is important to make sure that the customer has a realistic price proposition where we offer the tickets and then it's optional whether you want to further expand it with specific seats or specific food options.
But we're going to start the program in Africa and look at one of the poorest countries in the world.
We are talking about Malawi.
According to the World Bank, more than seventy percent of its population lives on less than $2 .15 a day.
So it's a country that desperately needs more investment and access to capital.
So the decision by the International Monetary Fund to terminate a $175 million loan program, whilst in the scale of the global economy, it's not a huge amount, is a very serious blow to its faltering economy.
We'll hear from the country's finance minister in a few minutes, but Patrick Cuyahua is a Malawian farmer who's been telling me about the economic challenges that he and other people are now facing.
Currently the economic landscape is not favorable for most of us.
There's been a lot of increasing prices of just general basic needs for us.
We're talking about basic needs like sugar, bread and maize, which is our staple food.
So there's been a general increase for us, and most households cannot afford to have three meals as it is.
You talk about those prices increasing.
How quickly are they increasing?
Have they gone up 10 percent in the last few months?
Is it 20 percent? What sort of numbers are you seeing when you're going to buy things?
I would say even up to 50 percent, because what is happening is that you would find that you've bought something to lower price this week.
They say you've bought Braid at around 2000 Malawi, Kwacha.
And then the other week you find that there's been an increase, which is something that most of us were not ready for, because the increases are happening at a very fast pace compared to what we expected and when you go to the shop owners to inquire about the prices they tell you no the prices are increasing each and every day the production cost is high for us.
And obviously people's wages, your income as a farmer is not going up so you just end up buying less don't you.
Yes the general income for most of these households, farming households, is from what they produced in the outgoing season.
And production has not been that favorable because most parts of the country were hit by a drought, so we did not have consistent length for production.
So most of them have harvested less than they're supposed to sell, and then what they sell, they buy other basic needs, which is not the case because from the list that they have produced, they can either just choose to eat or choose to sell some to get some of the basic needs.
The only possible option is to cut back either on the number of meals, cut back in terms of instead of buying imported, let's say imported, commodities or some of these expensive basic needs, you just choose to either switch to locally -produced meals or locally -produced food items. Patrick there giving us a real -life example of what life is like in Malawi.
let us hear now from simplex Chitiola Banda.
He is the Minister of Finance and Economic Affairs for the Malawian Government.
Let me clarify by saying it's not a decision that has been taken by International Monetary Fund.
It is actually a decision that we've taken as government because we think it is in the best interest of our country.
The elections are in September.
That is quite a long period though, because Malawi desperately needs this money, doesn't it?
We really need this money.
Remember that when we qualified on the 14th of November last year, it is only one disbursement that was done and ever since we haven't had any disbursement.
So much as we need the money, but we need also to look at the social obligations that the country has for its peoples.
But you know as well as I do that the IMF imposes conditions.
They said fiscal discipline has proven difficult to maintain in the current environment, due to elevated spending pressures.
Aren't they saying that you really haven't done your job properly?
Not necessarily. Reality is when you are told that you need to build up reserves, but at the same time the country is running dry because you don't have fuel.
And without that, then definitely the country will actually be in problems. And in that case, obviously, you choose to procure fewer than to build reserves.
That's one example.
The second example is when you are told that for you to actually remain in the programme, you need to automatically adjust prices of fuel for instance.
And everybody knows that when you do that it will have a negative impact in terms of sky locating, of prices, of basic commodities.
And then that leads into superinflation.
One of the things the IMF says very clearly is low tax collection in Malawi.
You need to improve that system.
You need to control government spending.
I think a lot of people would accept what you say but others would say you're not managing the economy properly that's why you're in this situation.
We are coming from our history and I think people should understand us in that context for instance, we need to know that you can collect more taxes and you can expand the tax base if you are doing more production but how do you do production?
You need to have industries in It is the same IMF in our early days that actually told Malayans to properize, and we had to sell all the industries in this country.
That in a way affected production that we used to have in the early years.
If we are given our Malayan situation to collect more taxes, what it means is that we need to overtax Malayans, which is a tour order because we are taxing Malayans who are already burdened by a huge tax resume.
So that's I think one of the reasons why we say we need to come back to drawing board and probably renegotiate all the realistic assumptions.
If you cannot, even in September, reach an agreement with the IMF, the lender of last resort, where will you get money from?
We will still continue engaging our development partners who are going to understand our economic position so we believe that partners will be there.
Away from the IMF, Malawi faces many challenges.
Half your population is in poverty, a fifth of your population is in extreme poverty.
How will you get them out of that cycle?
That's why we are now trying to explore and explore our economic activities that can take our people out of poverty to prosper.
For instance, carrying in two mining activities.
internalise, monetise them in order for us to impact Malari's GDP.
We are also venturing in two serious mega farms. This is where we are venturing in two commercially viable agricultural activities.
I think you're quite aware that we are also sending labour in Israel, that will give us resources.
Those are good steps.
Many people would say one of the key problems you've not addressed is the problem of corruption in the country.
Well, we are coming from a history that many people were involved in corruption.
But I would like to assure you that not every politician is corrupt.
I'm one of such examples that I've never been corrupt.
And I think young people could take that as an example.
Let's bring in Kerry Leahy, regular on the program.
Kerry, it's not a huge amount of money in the world of finance it's 175 million dollars but for a country like Malawi it is priceless that amount of money, isn't it?
Well it's certainly the difference between night and day and obviously when you're having all your your funding.
It's a major deal, but it's pretty obvious the IMF is displeased by the current situation in Malawi.
They certainly are, let's hear from them.
The IMF mission chief in Malawi is Justin Tyson.
He told me why the programme was no longer continuing.
Under IMF policy, if reviews are not completed over an 18 -month period, the programme automatically expires.
No reviews have been successfully completed and so it automatically expires.
And when those reviews are not successfully completed, is that the onus there on the Malawi in government to complete those reviews?
In the case of Malawi, program implementation has faced numerous challenges and importantly was not able to achieve macroeconomic stability.
There was a big drought in 2024 which affected food prices and food availability.
But there have also been challenges on the policy front.
Fiscal discipline has been difficult to maintain in the current environment due to elevated spending pressures.
And the external debt -restruction process, while ongoing, has not yet concluded.
So the combination of these factors made it difficult to complete a review.
What will the Malawian government need to do to get access to that desperately needed cash?
once again the IMF is the lender of last resort is it controlling spending is it increasing taxation balancing the budgets what do you need to see?
All members can access IMF funding if they demonstrate that they have a balance of payment need what will that look like exactly in the case of Malawi what it would really be about showing there's a program in place that will begin to address some of the macroeconomic imbalances that we are seeing.
There we go heard from the IMF there.
Kerry, it's a simple thing, if you lend somebody money, you're gonna put terms in place.
And if people don't agree to those terms, they don't get the cash.
And that's what's happening here between the IMF and the country, isn't it?
Well, with 2020 hindsight, that's exactly what happened.
If you don't follow the rules of the loan, the loan funds get turned off and they have an automatic process that if the process isn't followed, do you automatically cut off the phones?" And that's what's happening in Malawi.
It certainly is. Thank you for that Kerry, stay with us.
We're keep trying to on this programme bring you some people who can give you an insight into Donald Trump's thinking because it's having such an impact on the global policy and try and understand some of the economic policies that he's putting in place.
Let's speak now to Paul Dans, who led Project 2025, which some say helped create the blueprint for his second term in terms of economic policies, other policies as well.
Is that fair Paul? Quite an influence?
Well hey Guerrero, great to be with you.
You know, Donald Trump is on his second term, so he really had in mind a lot from the first term he wanted to go with, but what Project 2025 really did was, I think, jettison all these ideas into the discourse, the public discourse and get the real country behind it.
What we did for the first time was unite the conservative sphere, over 110 organizations came together, put to the side their differences, but really focused on rounding up the ideas and personnel recommendations so the President can move out day one.
So I do think, a lot of it did get reflected, yes.
Let's talk about the one we've been talking about the most, and most people have been tariffs.
the policies that he's put in place didn't really work, did they?
So he's having to backtrack now.
Is that a fair assessment?
I don't think so at all.
I think they've driven, they brought a lot of countries to the bargaining table.
I think they had 70 or maybe more countries reach out to the treasury within days of that.
But what he is doing is really a resetting.
We are no longer in post World War II economy.
We have to bring back certain core industries to the United States, and we also have to reset things on a fair term, given the rise of China, particularly, but also other countries.
And what he's done now is beginning to strike these trade deals.
Interestingly, with Project 2025, we noticed that there was some ambivalence within the conservative sphere on these topics.
So we in, advocate for one position or the other.
But to be clear, the president is very America first. And I think it's important that folks around the world realize this is incumbent for the United States to get this economy back on its legs for everyone else.
But get its economy back on track.
You have the best economy in the world.
That system has worked incredibly well for you.
Why change it now? What we saw in Covid, a real kind of collapse, we saw the strategic danger that we faced in these really just -in -time supply lines.
And more to that, that important things like pharmaceuticals weren't even being manufactured in the United States.
So with that recollection, you have to take pause and bring things back.
the steel, you know, a lot of these core industries that we have been able to make ourselves into the arsenal of democracy just aren't here.
When it takes seven years to build a new Stinger missile, we have a problem and the free world by extension does as well.
We've seen Donald Trump tackle tariffs, he's probably been one of the central policies, economic policies looked at so far.
While those trade negotiations are taking place, he'll turn his attention elsewhere.
What would you like to see him look at next in the economy?
What what do you think he'll look at closely next?
Is it gonna be tax?
Is it gonna be the deficit?
Where's he gonna go next?
Well, you know, I think this is what democracy looks like, if you will.
This is what the people in America voted for.
And it may seem a little strange to the world, but this is really peace and prosperity.
We haven't seen this.
And I think the economy that he's helping build for the free world is, one, gonna be rooted in a peace, a world peace.
You saw him just settle, you know, bring India and Pakistan to the bargaining table that is ceasefire.
That's temporary - He's rushing off.
Ukraine, Russia, talk's not going as well maybe as people hoped.
Well, they're going to start.
They're actually happening, is the point.
And you know, and he's moving into Spears in the Gulf and really turning conventional wisdom on his head.
So this man is a peacemaker.
But when it comes to economic building, you know, I think here at home, there is going to be a little reshuffling of the deck.
He is obviously going to be focusing heavily on on the beautiful bill, but that may need to be disaggregated into several other bills.
The point is that we have to, you know, critical to get the Trump tax cuts made permanent so we don't have the largest tax rise, but also take time to get these those cuts permanent to really start making.
You'd like to see bigger cuts.
Sorry, to interrupt you.
Bigger cuts in the federal government to help close that huge deficit that the U .S. has.
We're on an unsustainable track.
I mean, we have $37 billion, a trillion rather, in national debt and mounting a $2 trillion structural deficit, and at some point, we're gonna be crowded out from even being able to do private borrowing.
Everybody pays this bill, whether they know it or not, when they get home and open up their credit card statement or their mortgage and everything else down the line, the inflation.
So we have to wrestle the spending.
It's not so much a revenue problem as Secretary Besant says.
It's that we have to bring this under control and that's an American problem.
We can't lay that out on the world.
That's kind of a structural breakdown in Congress.
We have seen politicians not have the will to actually make the tough decisions, but that's Donald Trump in the second term untethered by the need to kind of curry favor for reelection.
He's spending that political capital doing the long -term investment that I think is going to pay off.
Paul, we're going to look forward to talking to you again and see how this unfolds.
Thank you so much for joining us on the program.
Welcome to The W, where elite athletes are redefining the game of basketball.
From buzzer beating shots, jaw -dropping defense, and logo threes, the WNBA delivers nonstop action and world -class talent every game.
These athletes don't just play the game, they elevated.
The New York Liberty are the reigning champions, and the Golden State Valkyries are the newest team to join the league since 2008.
Watch the WNBA this season on ABC, CBS, ESPN, Ion, and Prime — starting May 16th.
So you want to start a business?
You might think you need a team of people and fancy tech skills, but listen to me when I say you don't.
You just need Go Daddy Aero.
I'm Walton Goggins, an actor.
And I like the sound of starting my own business, Walton Goggins' Goggle Glasses.
But I couldn't do this on my own.
Go Daddy Aero uses AI to create everything you need to grow a business.
It'll make you a unique logo.
It'll create a custom website.
It'll write social posts for you and even set you up with a social media calendar.
How cool is that? Listen to this.
For a limited time, you can get Arrow All Access for just $1 a week for 12 weeks.
We're talking all the AI power of GoDaddy Arrow plus a domain, e -commerce store, payments, professional email, a unified inbox, all for less money than I spend on deep tanning lotion while sunbathing off the Amalfi coast. You know what that sounds like?
A plan. Get started at go daddy dot com.
Terms apply. You're with World Business Report from the BBC World Service.
We were talking about President Trump.
Willy here said India has offered to drop all tariffs on US goods, something India swiftly denied.
Here is President Trump talking about India.
Because India's one of the highest tariff nations in the world.
It's very hard to sell and to India, and they've offered us a deal where basically they're willing to literally charge us no tariff.
B .C. Bharatiya is the president of the Confederation of All Indian Traders which represents nearly 90 million members across the country.
Whiskey and all those things, these are all luxury products not consumed by normal masses of our country.
So the tariff on those products hardly impacts Indian goods and services.
Agriculture and all those things will have a great impact.
So, I cannot agree that India will allow zero tariffs on such items. Talks are ongoing for a trade agreement, however, and for a look at what we might see with those negotiations.
Milan Vaishnav is a political economist and director with the Carnegie Endowment for International Police.
Indians have indeed signaled that on fifty to sixty percent of American exports to India, they are potentially willing to go to a zero -tariff model, and for many of the remaining items, they would go to what they call a most favored nation model, which means a reduced tariff for trusted trading partners.
When you talk about those items which will be the ones most difficult to make a deal on, what are those items?
Are we talking about agriculture here?
Well, for India, certainly agriculture is number one on the list. I mean, there are two reasons for this.
The first is that agrarian workers make up between 40 % and 50 % of the overall labor pool in India so they are politically very influential.
And secondly, I think particularly after the COVID -19 pandemic, there are really heightened concerns in India about food security and making sure that to the extent possible, the population is self -sufficient when it comes to food.
So, it is going to be very difficult indeed for any government, it doesn't matter if it's the Modi government or a different government to make dramatic cuts to tariffs when it comes to agricultural products.
And what does India get in return?
Trade deals were always a negotiation.
What does India gain on the other side?
Where can you see the US compromising?
Well that's a very good question because if you look at the outlines of the trade deal that the United States has announced with the United Kingdom, for instance, they have not, the United States has not proposed taking down its tariffs to zero.
They have basically agreed to keep them flat at 10%.
So, you know, I think in this case it's rather one -sided.
The U .S. is really asking for a lot.
It's not clear what they're willing to give up.
I think one thing which they will have to come to some accommodation on with the Indians is the question of labor mobility.
And remember that the Indian diaspora in the United States numbers more than five million.
It's one of the largest concentrations of Indians living abroad, and this is an important thing for India because, you know, India is the world's largest recipient of inward remittances, remittances sent by migrants who are living abroad who are of Indian origin.
And so they actually it's quite a lucrative business to have Indians migrate from their homeland and settle in the United States.
And as you know, and I'm sure your listeners know, there are a range of restrictions that the Trump administration has implemented or is thinking about implementing, that would make it very hard, even for high skilled Indian immigrants to settle in the United States.
And just on those comments that Donald Trump made about Apple building less in India, more in the US, can you see the company slowing down its expansion in India?
I don't think so. And I think, you know, this is where the rubber meets the road.
It shows you where Make America Great Again is in contradiction, in some ways, to make in India.
Apple, like many other companies, is looking to de -risk, to de -leverage from China.
India has offered itself as what we call the China plus one alternative, and Apple is one of those early companies which has decided to take India up on its offer and famously has said that by this year, 25 % of all iPhones manufactured around the world will be made in India.
So this is not something that India is going to take lying down.
It's not something that Apple can suddenly shift and turn on a dime.
And so I think this is setting up for a very difficult conversation between the Trump administration and the Modi government.
Milan Bežnev from the Carnegie Endowment for International piece, Kerry Lehe's still with us.
Walmart talking about increasing one of the biggest supermarkets in the US, the biggest and one of the biggest in the world, about increasing its prices because of tariffs.
Kerry have a listen to this.
John David Rainey is Chief Financial Officer at Walmart.
He's been talking to the US networks CNBC.
Keep in mind, just a week ago, we were at 145 % tariffs.
Now, we're very appreciative of the progress that the administration has made to get them down to this level.
But I would say that it's still too high for consumers.
We'd like to see them come down more.
Are the companies going to follow this lead, Kerry?
I think so. Obviously, this is the biggest U .S. retailer and they've raised their prices and they admit they may have to raise them even further and talked about price increases accelerated in April compared to March. So I don't think there's any way you can get around it.
They will hope that it won't get any worse than it is currently now and the pause will continue and become permanent, but it's hard to believe even Huawei with all its pricing power is going to be able to offset much of a 30 -40 % increase in any product from China or 10 -15 % from any product anywhere in the world." Yup, total airline revenue is expected to top $1 trillion for the first time ever this year.
A lot of that is coming from things like extra baggage and seat selection.
It's something that Sam Gruett has been looking into in Toronto, Canada.
Standing outside Toronto's Billy Bishop Airport I meet Lauren Alexander who is 24, and has flown over for the weekend from Boston, carrying only a backpack to avoid baggage fees.
I think it's ridiculous.
It's way too much money.
Yeah, it feels like a trick because it's like you buy the ticket, you think it's gonna be less expensive, then you have to pay like 200 extra dollars to just bring your bag with you, so.
There was a time when seat selection, meals, and checked bags came standard. Now it's a business worth billions, as aviation consultant Jay Sorenson explains.
Over the passage of time the low -cost carriers were providing very significant competition.
Traditional airlines felt they had to do something to meet that competition.
Jay says these extra fees make an estimated a hundred and forty five billion dollars for the industry annually.
Peter Albers is the CEO of India's biggest airline IndiGo, which charges fees for things like seat choice and food.
I think what for us is important to make sure that the customer has a realistic price proposition.
What we offer the ticket and then it's optional whether you want to further expand it with specific seats or specific food options.
There is a huge market for bags that perfectly fit these what we call them baggage sizes.
Travel journalist Chelsea Dickinson makes videos about air travel on TikTok.
The app says posts about the hashtag luggage have increased in volume by 135 percent this year.
Social media has really propelled this idea of needing a bag that fits the baggage allowance requirements.
And I say this as somebody who has directly experienced this, because that has become a core part of the content that I create and post on social media.
Experts and customers will be watching closely to see whether airlines continue to charge or whether they start to include the costs of onboard benefits to try and differentiate themselves from the competition.
Sam Criter there you can hear the extended version of that on wherever you get your business daily podcasts from Kerry Lee.
He's still with us they're not likely to turn their back on this model it's making some airlines a lot of money isn't it Kerry?
No it's hard to believe they won't go with that economists think this is great this is all marginal pricing even though the typical customer hates it so the ability to save those fees to get the bag to fit in an ever smaller spot either above your head or in front of your feed is a constant challenge but I don't think they're going to change that the pricing there may be a little bit where you have like a premium plus will allow you to check your bag and not pay for it but they've already been doing that a couple of years so that's about all I think they'll get.
Gary thanks for joining us I'm travelling this weekend already wondering about if my baggage is gonna fit that's it from Will Business report.
You know some people say that Odoo Business Management software is like fertilizer, the way it promotes growth and all.
But other people say Odoo is like a magic beanstalk because it grows with your company and is also magically affordable.
And there's some people who would even say Odoo's individual software programs come together to build the perfect suite like building blocks.
Well, Odoo is all of these things.
Fertilizer. Magic beanstalk.
Building blocks for business.
So sign up now at odoo .com.
odoo .com
