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This is Andrew Peach with World Business Report here on the BBC World Service.
Today, President Trump says he'll fix the US trade deficit with Japan by exporting record volumes of liquefied natural gas.
Japan wanted to buy LNG and Biden wouldn't sell it.
And I'm trying to figure that one out.
Maybe it was the environment.
In just over six hours' time, virtually all the US AID staff are due to go on leave.
Now, a judge says he'll temporarily block some elements of the Trump administration's plan to dismantle the agency.
We'll look at the impact on Colombia, the biggest recipient of USAID in Latin America.
And I'm going to catch up with Teddy, who spoke to me on World Business Report four weeks ago when her restaurant in Malibu had been destroyed by the wildfires.
We evacuated two nights ago and our crew was in the building and the fireman came and said, you need to leave.
And our manager said she got to the end of the parking lot, turned around and the flames were engulfing the back of the building.
First, though, President Trump says the US will export record volumes of liquefied natural gas to Japan.
He was speaking at a news conference a couple of hours ago after a meeting with the Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba.
We've opened the sale of LNG immediately.
Actually, we did it a few days ago.
And right now, not only China, everybody wants to buy it.
We have more than anybody, and they're all buying it.
But Japan in particular, we're very happy that they're going to start immediately.
And we can supply it to the world, but we're supplying it to Japan.
And they can always be right up in the front of the line.
Live to Geoffrey Schott, Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
economics. Jeffrey, thanks for being with us on World Business Report.
So both men at the news conference suggested that Japan had not been allowed to buy the LNG it wanted to in the past.
Why not? We have more than anybody and they're all buying it.
But Japan in particular, we're very happy that they're going to start immediately and we can supply it to the world.
But we're supplying it to Japan and they can always be right up in the front of the line.
Live to Geoffrey Schott, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
Geoffrey, thanks for being with us on World Business Report.
So both men at the news conference suggested that Japan had not been allowed to buy the LNG it wanted to in the past.
Why not? Well, there have been some constraints because of President Biden's climate policies, but those strengths are basically being totally lifted by President Trump, and he hopes to sell much more LNG, other energy products, to our friends in Asia and in Europe.
But that will improve US exports, but will only put a small dent in the in the large US deficits that we have with Japan and Europe.
Yes, I was going to talk about the deficit because it was sold by President Trump in this news conference as a way to deal with a deficit of 100 billion dollars.
Well, the deficit with Japan last year was 68 billion just for merchandise.
And so this will, you know, make a make a small dent.
But fifty three billion dollar deficit of the 68 was in the auto sector.
And so one of the things that Trump also wants to do is to threaten new tariffs to block manufactured goods from being imported into the United States and encourage Japanese companies to invest more in the U .S.
They're already big investors, but he wants them to do more to produce in the US instead of importing.
The whole news conference was a bit of a love in between the two leaders.
So when tariffs were raised by journalists, they both wanted to say, well, we didn't really talk about that.
That's a hypothetical.
They wanted to get off that subject.
Well, I think because they were focusing on energy, they were focusing on steel and Nippon Steel's efforts.
to buy U .S. steel and invest in new technologies to improve the competitiveness of the U .S.
operations. I think there will be some progress on that, and they'll find a way to get around the view that Japan Steel is buying and controlling U .S.
steel. They'll find a way to be a big investor in the U .S.
market Japan is really contributing a lot in terms of production and jobs in the US market.
And I think President Trump wants to see that grow even bigger.
Thank you so much, Geoffrey.
Geoffrey Schott from the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
Now, in a few hours from now, virtually all US AID staff are due to be put on leave.
Reports say headcount will fall from more than 10 ,000 to a few hundred.
Having said that, a US judge is now saying he's issuing a temporary restraining order to stop the Trump administration from dismantling USAID, at least for now.
The agency's former boss, Samantha Power, says if it happens, it's one of the worst and most costly foreign policy blunders in US history and will endanger millions of lives around the world.
The US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters the administration has no choice.
We are now going to have to work from the bottom up instead of the top down to identify which programs should be specially designated and therefore exempted from that order.
Our preference would have been to do this in a more orderly fashion from the top down, but we had no cooperation and in fact insubordination and so it required us to work from the bottom up.
Isaac Motebi is from the ARC Wellness Hub in Uganda, which is a clinic providing sexual health services to LGBT people in Kampala.
Since we received the communication from the different implementing partners about the stop work order, we've not been able to access supplies to support the HIV services we provide.
That is to say the antitravirals, the ARVs, PrEP, PrEP services.
Of course, without the HIV prevention measures that we've been having that have been proven to be working for key populations, we anticipate the rising, you know, cases of HIV.
because these people are already at high risk of contracting HIV and if there are no prevention measures that work for them, of course the cases are going to go high.
Colombia is the biggest recipient of US foreign assistance in Latin America, for example, supporting 2 .8 million Venezuelans who fled there.
In 2024, the agency transferred $45 million to the UN World Food Programme, mostly to help them.
Let's talk to Bram Ebers, who's a consultant at the International Crisis Group in Bogotá.
Bram, thank you for being with us on World Business Report.
What's this money all spent on?
Thanks for inviting me.
USAID has a history of over half a century in Colombia and the funds are to the benefit of migrant populations.
I'm able to access supplies to support the HIV services we provide.
That is to say the antitravirals, the ARVs, PrEP, PrEP services.
Of course, without the HIV prevention measures that we've been having, that have been proven to be working for key populations, we anticipate the rising, you know, cases of HIV because these people are already at high risk of contracting HIV.
And if there are no prevention measures that work for them, of course, the cases are going to go high.
Colombia is the biggest recipient of US foreign assistance in Latin America, for example, supporting 2 .8 million Venezuelans who fled there.
In 2024, the agency transferred $45 million to the UN World Food Programme, mostly to help them.
Let's talk to Bram Ibis, who's a consultant at the International Crisis Group in Bogota.
Bram, thank you for being with us on World Business Report.
What's this money all spent on?
Thanks for inviting me.
USAID has a history of over half a century in Colombia, and the funds are to the benefit of migrant populations displaced by conflict situations in Colombia.
It's invested in the peace process, which was signed with the biggest re -organization in the form of FARC in 2016.
So the decision to cut USAID funds is already having devastating impacts in Colombia.
In Washington, they might calculate the numbers, but it's about real people left stranded, communities without support, and the absence of life -saving aid for vulnerable migrants and refugee populations.
So we heard from Kampala there.
I've seen reports from Johannesburg today about people turning up for blood tests and finding the clinic they've been going to for a long time is closed.
What's the impact already in Bogota and the rest of Colombia?
Most humanitarian organisations depend on US aid funds.
But we see that USAID sponsors 70 percent of the humanitarian response in Colombia, which is a country that still finds itself spiraling in a new chapter of conflict.
For example, when we look at the border region within Israel called Catatumbo in northeastern Colombia, we see that at the moment there are over 50 ,000 people displaced by violence.
And most of the humanitarian agencies, including UN agencies, have no funds or not sufficient funds for emergency responses.
What we also see is that the humanitarian organizations working on de -mining have no money anymore to continue operations.
So we're really talking about the difference between life and death.
Checks for pregnant migrant women who don't have access to the regular health system, they all need to close and all these people are falling outside of the boats.
And just a final thought, the Colombian government has actually said it doesn't want this aid money, it wants to provide the cash for all this itself.
I mean, the gap is just too big.
We know that other donors, for example, ECO from the European Union or private sponsors cannot fill the gap that is left behind by the cuts in US aid funds.
So, I mean, Colombia can pretend with the national budget to maybe fill some of the holes when it comes to specific units working on implementation of parts of the peace deal.
But when it comes to the shared unitarian crisis that are tormenting Colombia at the moment, there is no way to fill the gap.
Thank you very much indeed for that, Bram.
Bram Ibis is in Bogota as a consultant at the International Crisis Group.
Right, let's see what else is happening today with Chris Lowe, Chief Economist at FHN Financial in New York.
Chris, thanks for being with us.
lots of data on the US economy, which we'll just run through, I think.
Let's talk about the Michigan consumer sentiment and the fact that fewer jobs are being created in the US than might've been expected.
Yeah, that's right.
The consumer sentiment index from Michigan at 67 .8 is still in decent territory, but it's a little weaker than it was last month and more to the point quite a bit weaker than expected.
It was expected to rise.
It did not. People are a little more nervous than they were a month ago about job prospects and about income.
And that actually fits pretty well with what we saw in the January job statistics released this morning.
There were 143 ,000 jobs created.
That's less than 175 ,000 expected.
You know, as far as why it was weaker, we had a severe winter storm in the South in January during the survey period.
Weather -related job misses were the highest in four years.
So, you know, I think that explains an awful lot.
But inside this report was a once -annual revision to the data.
They took almost 600 ,000 jobs out of the job growth reported last year.
So the whole picture now looking backward is a lot flatter than we thought.
Slower job growth last year, of course, better productivity growth because GDP was still pretty good.
Job misses were the highest in four years.
So, you know, I think that explains an awful lot.
But inside this report was a once annual revision to the data.
They took almost 600 ,000 jobs out of the job growth reported last year.
So the whole picture now looking backward is a lot flatter than we thought.
slower job growth last year, of course, better productivity growth because GDP was still pretty good.
But it does explain this growing discontent in the US, especially among those who are earning the least.
We've also got the Fed saying it doesn't plan to cut rates anytime soon.
Yeah, we heard from three Fed officials in just the last two days saying that they don't think the Fed should cut rates anytime soon.
They're very comfortable with where rates are now.
And that, you know, it varies from Lori Logan.
She's president of the Dallas Fed, who said she thinks rates are roughly neutral, meaning they shouldn't go any lower, to Austin Goolsbee, the president of the Chicago Fed, who said he's worried about inflation from tariffs.
And until the tariff situation is resolved.
He thinks the Fed should be wary about lowering rates.
What's going on with gold?
I think gold is strong partly because of the, you know, policy attitude in Washington, the way Donald Trump has come into office and the absolute flurry of different fronts where he's fighting to change things.
It's led to extraordinary uncertainty in the markets, which contributes to volatility.
And gold is a traditional place to hide and wait out that kind of market volatility.
I think it's also an indication that tariffs are potentially inflationary and people are looking to diversify away from dollars.
Frankly, other currencies are not much of a choice.
Most of them are weakening against the dollar.
So they're going into gold, they're going into Bitcoin.
Chris, thank you. That's Chris Lowe, Chief Economist at FHN Financial in New York.
This is Andrew Peach with World Business Report from the BBC World Service.
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Now, the British government has ordered Apple to allow it to see encrypted files uploaded to its cloud services by anyone with an Apple account anywhere in the world.
This is all about Apple's advanced data protection setting.
Apple has previously said it would rather withdraw that in the UK rather than weaken security for customers elsewhere in the world.
It wouldn't be World Business Report without a chat with Lily Jamali, our US tech correspondent.
Lily, tell us more about this story.
Well, it's good to be with you, Andrew.
Thank you. I have to say this story is being painted as a pretty extraordinary move on the part of the UK government.
This is done under the auspices of the Investigatory Powers Act.
And so those moves, in this case by the UK Home Office, are supposed to be done in secret.
They are not commenting.
Apple is not commenting, but what we understand the Home Office wants here is encrypted data stored by Apple users in the cloud, not just Apple users in the UK, but users all around the world.
And so this would affect photos and notes and other materials that people place on the cloud.
This is supposed to be encrypted.
Only users can access it.
Not even Apple can access it by design.
And so all of this has to do with law enforcement efforts in the UK.
They say that a lot of this criminal activity like terrorism and so forth, that they want to investigate, people can hide behind this encryption.
So they want to crack that.
But privacy advocates are outraged by this.
One other story I just want to touch on with you, Lily.
Huge money, like hundreds of billions of dollars being invested into developing AI because there are still truckloads of ash and debris that need to be carted away from 16 ,000 properties that got damaged or destroyed.
Let's hear more from Kayleigh Wells from our partner's Marketplace.
Sue Pascoe left her house in the Pacific Palisades with not much more than a change of clothes.
She expected to be back home quickly.
We would go out tonight and we'll be back tomorrow.
So you throw a few things in through the dog's dishes and, you know, just packed a couple pairs of underwear and that was it.
Everything else she left behind.
After the smoke cleared, when she visited her property, she found a ceramic duct and a vase.
The rest is ash. The homes of Pascoe and her neighbors are in Phase 1 of FEMA's cleanup process, which is all about removing hazardous waste.
Because this is a matter of protecting public safety in the environment.
Carl Banks is deputy incident commander at the U .S.
Environmental Protection Agency, which is leading this process of clearing hazardous stuff.
Such as batteries, cleansers, paints, oils, ammunition, that kind of thing.
All told, the EPA is sending out more than 1 ,000 people in hazmat suits to comb through the wreckage by hand.
He says it's EPA's largest response in our history for a wildfire.
The only thing that any of us who've been doing this for a couple decades now can compare this to is Katrina.
As in the 2005 hurricane that destroyed much of the Gulf Coast.
President Trump ordered the EPA to finish the process in 30 days.
Banks says the agency is doing everything it can to follow those marching orders, but won't give an official end date.
Once the EPA has given its blessing to enter a house, Phase 2 can begin.
Phase 2 is the general debris removal.
Mark Pestrella is the director of L .A.
County's Department of Public Works.
Our role is essentially as an administrator of the program.
Phase 2 is all the stuff that is not hazardous.
Dead trees and cracked house foundations and lots of ash.
The Army Corps of Engineers is in charge of handling that part.
It'll do the job free of charge, though it will take any insurance coverage you have for debris removal.
And you have to sign up through L .A.
County. We go on that property to do debris removal without your permission, we'd be trespassing.
So in order to relieve that, we have a program called the Right of Entry Program that property owners need to enroll in.
To sign up, you have to fill out a 12 -page form and send it in to L .A.
County by the end of March.
And then you wait because Banks says the Army Corps expects phase two to take much longer.
Eighty to 90 percent of the properties will have their debris removed within a year or less.
And that's just to turn the property into a blank slate.
Fire victim Sue Pascoe is expecting to live in her temporary apartment for a while after that.
Our insurance adjuster, when we were looking for a place to rent, said, you know, it's going to be a year and a half to two years at a minimum, if we're lucky, if we're lucky.
You can get your property cleared faster, but in that case, you have to pay for it yourself.
And the cost of that starts at around $10 ,000.
That was Katie Wells reporting.
Now, if you were with me on the 9th of January, four weeks ago at the height of the fires, you might have heard me talking to Teddy Leonard from the Real Inn, which was a seafood restaurant in Malibu, destroyed by the wildfires.
I'm pleased to say Teddy's back with us.
How are things? Hi.
Well, it's interesting following that conversation because the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers are actually, they're staging at the site of the Real Inn as we speak.
So we were able to go down once and go through the debris and then it was told we would be kept from the property and people are not allowed down there.
It's all chained off and they've given us the same news.
They've said it's going to be at least a month but I think that's ambitious for the EPA.
I think it's going to be a few months and then after that it's going to be at least a year and a half before we can even talk about rebuilding if, in fact, that will be possible.
So there's a pile of debris where your restaurant used to be.
you're going to have to waste a long time before you can even go there, let alone have it all taken away and think, you know, do we want to rebuild?
What are we going to do?
How does all that feel?
Well, they're taking it away now.
They've taken it away so that they could stage the EPA there.
I see. So all the EPA cleanup is happening at the site of our restaurant.
So the Topanga community is very upset because they're worried about the toxic waste affecting the water table, the ocean.
you know, the creek.
There's a lot of pushback from the community about what that, the impact that this toxic waste will have.
So we've been listening to a lot of that.
Now, when we last spoke, your greatest concern, I think, was about your staff who'd worked there for such a long time with you, who are now out of work.
You were trying to raise some money to keep them going what happened with all of that oh it was it's been amazing we raised 195 000 and we met with the staff a week ago yesterday and we took them to lunch what that the impact that this toxic waste will have um so we're we've been listening to a lot
of that um now when we last spoke um your greatest concern i think was about your staff who'd worked there for such a long time with you who are now out of work you were trying to raise some money to keep them going what happened with all of that oh it was it's been amazing we raised 195 000 and we
met with the staff a week ago yesterday and we took them to lunch at a restaurant in the marina and we gave them the their larger checks to see them through the next few months and took a group picture, and we're able to sort of have some time to cry together and to be together.
And then yesterday, we met with them again.
The World Central Kitchen, which is a wonderful organization, Jose Andres, offered our crew $1 ,000 gift cards to Ralph's to cover their groceries for a while.
And so we got to meet up with our crew again, give them another disbursement from our GoFundMe.
And I gave them framed pictures of the crew, all of us together from the week before.
And again, it was very emotional.
A lot of tears, a lot of...
Yeah, nobody wanted to leave.
I bet. When we spoke before, I mean, what I took away from our conversation was just how quickly this had all happened.
You know, this restaurant was in a place where you'd had wildfires before, but this time, the moment you're told to evacuate, you're outside and the flames are already licking the building.
So it was a near -death experience, but you came much closer to danger than anyone would ever wish to.
How do you feel about all that now, looking back on it?
It's still very surreal.
I don't think anyone in Los Angeles, myself included, has really completely grasped or come to grips with what's happened.
We're all still trying to sort through, we're sorting through insurance, we're sorting through taking care of the crew and what next steps will be because it's all uncertain, as the woman that was just interviewed said, she won't be in her home for another year and a half, maybe even two years before
she can rebuild. And you said something like, you know, that this is the price of living in paradise um are you staying there are you going to rebuild is the realing going to reopen one day and if it takes two years or you is that all too soon to say it's a little too soon to say because we need permission from the state
parks and again they're using that whole area now to stage the army corps cleanup
