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I'm Rodney Williams. And I'm Travis Holloway.
Welcome to the Wealth Break Podcast, a real conversation about finance.
Let's be honest, building wealth doesn't look the same for everyone.
one. I feel like sometimes being broke is a cycle and that we might have to revisit that.
And we're not stopping at success stories.
What happens when it doesn't go right?
How do you cope with it?
Because wealth isn't just about money.
It's about creating a life where you thrive and help others do the same.
Listen to the Wealth Break podcast on the iHeart Radio app.
And this is Andrew Peach with World Business Report.
Thanks for your company.
On the way, President Trump is threatening some of the US's trading partners with tariffs of between 25 and 40 percent.
We'll look at whether we'll see more trade deals done this month and get reaction from businesses in Bangladesh and Japan.
We cannot really change the selling price, but due to the tariff that will be imposed, the importer in the United States will be paying the tariff.
China has a tight grip on the supply of rare earth minerals, but at what environmental cost?
And the industry's worth over two billion dollars, the Esports World Cup is kicking off in Riyadh.
First, quite a few countries have said they'll keep talking to the United States about the tariffs that the Trump administration is planning to impose on their exports after the president wrote to several threatening them with steep duties here's his spokesperson caroline levitt as you see we have these beautiful letters that the president has signed this one is to the president of the republic of korea original signature on that and these will be mailed and then here we also have another letter to the prime minister of japan as well both countries will be receiving a 25 tariff rate effective
on august 1st our Our business correspondent Theo Leggett is here with me.
So President Trump has moved the deadline from this week to next month.
But what difference can that period of time make?
Well, that's a very good question, Andrew.
I mean, for those people who don't remember where all this goes back to, it was in April that President Trump held out a big board on the White House lawn showing the tariff rates that he intended to impose on a whole range of countries who he said had unfair trading arrangements with the United States.
And in doing so, he was really tearing up decades worth of US trade policy.
The reaction to that was pretty quick.
The tariffs were due to come in about a week later, but the market's reaction was so strong, particularly on the bond market, that very, very quickly the US had to introduce a stay, had to suspend application of those tariffs for 90 days pending further negotiations and clearly the the hope was the intention was um that the countries that were targeted by these tariffs would agree to give concessions to the us that agreements could be drawn up and then those heavy tariff rates would not apply but here we are now three months on two deals have been done um one with the united kingdom that's a tariff
agreement agreement another one with vietnam which obviously is a much smaller trading nation and a third deal a kind of a framework deal with china which basically covers export controls rather than tariffs and that's it um and the white house insists that a raft of further agreements is coming but we haven't seen them yet so what this extra three three weeks gives us is simply another window for deals to be done if they're going to be done.
But there are serious questions.
Donald Trump and his colleagues are saying the phone's ringing off the hook, our email inbox is full of countries wanting to talk to us now.
They've led us up the hill a few times on this, as you've said.
Do you think we'll actually see these tariffs come in on the 1st of August?
It's an extremely good question.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if they got deferred further.
further. And part of this is Donald Trump likes to negotiate from a position of strength and clearly thought three months ago that he was doing just that.
But the reaction from the markets was very strong.
It pushed up the implied cost of borrowing for the US government and created a situation that was not tolerable.
And there is the risk that if the US government goes ahead with bumping up these tariffs, as it is once again threatening to do, then you could get the same same kind of reaction.
And then the White House could have its hand forced again.
So it's very difficult to see these tariffs going through in their entirety.
We may see further deals being done.
For example, the European Union has suggested that an agreement is on the table at the moment.
Theo, stay with me.
We're going to hear from some business owners now in parts of the world where the steepest tariffs are threatened.
And first, we go to the clothing sector in Bangladesh and the denim garment manufacturer, Moehadine Rabel, who spoke to me from Dhaka.
Obviously, it is a huge impact because if you see today's business world, even one or two percent price high or difference makes a huge difference to get orders, right?
For example, if it is a $5 garments and the tariff is 35 percent, that will be basically $1 .75.
And if it is 20 percent, then it will be $1 so that reference is 75 cents in a $5 garments so can you imagine you cannot make profit of even a few cents and you are losing the order for a few cents then how can you will get I mean manage this gap of 70, 80 cents or $1 gap so definitely it will be impacted hugely but at the same time we need to see how much they are imposing to our other competitors like India and Pakistan that is very important to see because if you see Vietnam make the type of garments, we don't make in Bangladesh much of those.
So they are our competitors in terms of value but in terms of product category, we don't match that much actually.
And who pays the extra in a competitive market like the one you're in exporting garments to the US?
Suddenly there's a 35 % tariff.
Who pays for that? I presume you can't make the operation much more efficient than it already is it's going to be a struggle to put prices up so how do you get around that first of all the tariff is paid by the usa part right the buyers are the importers over there but when there is extra cost obviously the first effect the final effect goes to the consumers because the product price is increased and they have to buy the with a higher price so importers or the buyers they try to absorb a little bit from them and they try to get a big percentage or the full or some percentage from the manufacturer
so all through the supply chain basically it goes around you know but definitely should not be paid by the manufacturers because it's not our part for example when the 10 % tariff increase there many of those buyers were asking at least to share 50 percent of those increased cost which is actually not logical because Because Bangladesh doesn't do, you know, with a big profit.
And even though it's not your duty to pay those extra costs of the duty, because you are getting paid for the manufacturing only.
And do you worry that if in the end the cost ends up with the consumer and there's an extent to which that can't be avoided, they either won't buy the garment or they'll buy it from somewhere else?
Of course, there will be major problem for sure.
But I cannot say that the whole $7 billion, $8 billion will go out overnight from Bangladesh, because they need also an alternative market for those what we do.
We mostly do the cotton products.
Those are main competitors of ours, basically the India and Pakistan.
So we need to see how they are imposing to them as well.
At the same time, if it is expensive, there will be a percentage of the orders will go to other countries where the tariff is less, for sure.
So it will be definitely difficult to absorb this impact.
bet. That's Mohiuddin Rabel with me from DACA.
Let's bring in Fiona Sincotta, Senior Markets Analyst for Citi Index. How have the markets reacted to this threat of tariffs in the future again?
Because as I was saying to Theo, Fiona, we've had this a few times.
Yes, that's right. And actually, the markets, I think, are actually focusing on the idea of an extension of the deadline, suggesting that, you know, perhaps Trump is still open and flexible to a deal and more negotiations.
So we saw markets across Asia actually close higher.
Interesting, we have seen a little bit of weakness in the Japanese yen.
But we've seen the US dollar push higher against Asian currencies.
So it has very much been a bit of a mixed response.
But as far as the equity markets, stock markets are concerned, they have pushed higher in a show of optimism, I would say.
That's interesting.
So does that mean the damage of tariffs is all priced in now because we've talked about it and thought about it for so long.
It does feel like the markets have become a little bit numb to the ongoing discussions about tariffs.
And I think there is a sense that we are not going to be having that worst case scenario that was very much threatened back in April.
And it does seem that, as I said, that, you know, the sort of language we've had from Trump and the extension of deadlines and even the 1st of August may not be a final deadline does me feel like that there is an element of flexibility that the market is liking.
Donald Trump has said that himself hasn't he said I'm firm on the 1st of August but not that firm.
Theo Leggett our business correspondent still here.
You've got a feel for business owners like Mia Hedin and others in many countries around the world trying to second -guess their own government, trying to second -guess the unpredictable US administration, trying to make long -term decisions when no one knows what's going to happen tomorrow.
Absolutely. And in some cases, tariffs are introduced and then they're taken away and companies still have to find the money to pay the extra in the intervening time.
Let's not forget as well that, as one of your previous contributors said, the initial payment of these tariffs, it's not the countries that are being targeted that pay.
It's the U .S. importer.
So a lot of U .S. businesses are suddenly going to find themselves if these tariffs go ahead facing much bigger bills, but they can't plan for it.
and if you're a company which sends goods to the United States, what the US administration wants you to do is build a factory in the United States but in many cases, that costs a lot of money and are companies going to do that?
Go into an investment that's going to take several years, cost them a lot of money when Donald Trump and his administration may not be around for the long term?
Theo, thank you very much indeed.
We're going to go to Japan next and Kyoko Nagano who runs Sake Lovers Inc.
exporting sake or rice wine from Kawasaki.
Of course, if the tariff is going up, the price of the sake will be more for the people in the United States.
So I'm not sure if they'll be happy about it and I'm not sure if there would be more demand of sake because the hike will be on their side.
Because presumably you have little choice but to pass on the additional cost to your consumers in the end.
Well, we cannot really change the selling price because obviously, we had this hike of the rice price as well.
So all the ingredients or the material cost of rice for sake part.
So we can't really reduce any cost on our side.
But due to the tariff that will be imposed, the importer in the United States will be paying the tariff.
In that sense, the price of the sake that will be sold in the United States will be much higher.
Do you think consumers will be willing to pay that?
Because every sector is different.
And of Because in sake, people will want sake produced in Japan.
It's not like production can be so easily relocated elsewhere.
Exactly. We have about 100, 200 sake breweries.
But in the United States, there's about 30 sake breweries there.
But still, the demand is high for Japanese sake.
Maybe some of the restaurant owners might start to handle U .S.-made sake instead of Japanese -made sake.
So that is another concern.
But we feel that people who dine in a Japanese restaurant will definitely want to try the Japanese sake.
So they have to bear the cost. I suppose the way in which consumers have choice in this market is to go to a different sort of restaurant to eat and drink from a different palette of cuisine.
That's more the challenge you face rather than that people will want to buy their sake produced elsewhere.
Exactly. The moral of the demand is at the Japanese restaurant instead of purchasing at a Japanese supermarket because not all the sake are being handled at the supermarket elsewhere.
It's going to be at the specialty store.
So I feel like the demand for purchasing the sake overall will decline because it will be quite up because of the 25 % tariff.
And as a business owner, are you frustrated with your own government in Tokyo for not having done a deal with the US?
Or do you think, great, these things take years.
What else can they do?
I guess the frustration is not just from our government.
I guess it's headed to all the countries around the world who have to face with US.
They're all facing the same frustration right now.
I feel like it's not just our government, but all of the people around the world is facing the same difficult situation right now.
We have to go with the flow and we can't really do something different about it.
What do you want your government to do?
I guess Trump administration is more focused on tariff on cars, automobiles.
So we feel like the food materials, I hope that they would exempt that or at least keep it on 10 % instead of raising it up to 25%.
That's Kiyoko Nagano with me from Kawasaki.
Fiona Sinko, so you mentioned the slide of the yen.
Actually, the relationship between the US and Japan is by far the most important of all those we're discussing in trade terms. Let's give us a bit more on how the markets in Tokyo have reacted.
Well, interestingly, the Nikkei actually closed slightly higher, just modestly higher, 0 .1%.
But the Japanese yen is where we're sort of seeing the weakness come through.
So that's down around 0 .5 % against the US dollar.
So that's what we're seeing, which is interesting as well, because obviously the yen also is a safe haven.
So it's considered a safe haven trade.
So in times of geopolitical uncertainty or economic uncertainty, investors will go to the yen.
But we're not seeing that reaction today.
More with Fiona on the way.
This is World Business Report with Andrew Peach here on the BBC World.
I'm Rodney Williams. And I'm Travis Holloway.
Welcome to The Wealth Break.
Let's be honest. Building wealth doesn't look the same for everyone.
It's not just about saving.
It's about investing.
It's about navigating systems that weren't built for you.
embracing your hustle and relying on your community to create something bigger.
That's exactly why we created The Wealth Break.
We made something different, something more human.
It's not just another financial podcast. It's a conversation about real life, real struggles, and real wins.
We're here to talk about the journey.
You're hearing from people who've broken barriers, found creative ways to succeed, and learned to build wealth on their terms. Whether it's the first -time homeowner, a gig worker, or someone turning a side hustle into a six -figure business, we're bringing you their stories.
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But BBC News has discovered that this dominance comes at a big environmental price.
Our China correspondent Laura Bicker has been to the country's two biggest mining regions where she found a toxic legacy of polluted water and contaminated soil.
Farmer Huang is guiding us uphill to his forestry land, which is surrounded by rare earth mines.
We are filing complaints to force them to operate illegally.
Right now, their land use is illegal.
The mountains of Ganzhou in southern China's Jiangxi province are dotted with bright turquoise chemical ponds, which help separate the valuable minerals from the soil.
We arrive to the site of a landslide.
The mining company has planted small trees, but the damage is still clear.
The authorities' inaction is the main reason these landslides keep happening.
Farmers like us, we are the vulnerable ones.
To put it simply, we were born at a disadvantage.
It's pretty tragic.
Our interview is interrupted by men wearing uniforms with the Rare Earth Company logo.
Even as we walked downhill, we found our car blocked in and at least 12 men waiting for us.
You blocked the car in?
One told us he was a manager at the mining company before confronting our interviewee.
It's not a secret. It's their land.
He refused to let us leave for around three hours.
We asked the China Rare Earth Jiangxi Company to comment, but they declined.
There were once more than a thousand mines in this one county, an indication of the chokehold China has on the world's supply of a group of metals needed for nearly everything that we switch on every day, from smartphones to Bluetooth speakers, computers to TV screens.
But the country was in such a rush for rare earths that it developed first and hoped to clean up later, says Professor Julie Klinger, author of Rear Earth Frontiers.
That was a strategy that was implemented despite the carefully documented social and environmental impacts.
And although there's a lot of research, there's a lot of data on those impacts to water, to land, to air quality, and the impacts on human mortality, I think actually it's very difficult to know the true human and environmental cost of that sort of development model.
some of the worst health effects have been found in the north of the country in inner mongolia near the world's largest rare earth mine i'm walking beside the yellow river the second largest river in china staring at a skyline of the city of balto which has become famous in this country because of rare earths toxic chemicals Chemicals used to separate rare earths from the soil have created a huge tailings pond which is slowly leaching towards this mother river.
We drove around the man -made lake full of grey, radioactive sludge.
The villagers who once lived here have been moved after investigations into cancer clusters and birth defects.
Hello. Further north, at the mine site where clouds of dust rise from deep grey craters, we found farmers planting green onions.
There used to be Mongolian families living back there.
The elders passed away and the younger ones moved to the city to work.
The rare earth companies bought our pastures and we got paid.
So there are benefits.
But as we travelled home, our car was surrounded by police.
The Chinese government seems sensitive to criticism of its environmental record. The ministries in charge refused to answer our questions.
But our own research suggests there have been huge improvements to try to rein in the harm.
harm. Scientists hope China has learned from its toxic past, especially as the country now looks to expand its operations abroad.
Our China correspondent Laura Bicker reporting for World Business Report.
Fiona Sincotta from City Index still with me.
Let's talk about Sheen.
Fiona, why are they in the news?
Yeah, so Sheen, this is the Chinese company that's looking to, or has been looking to IPO in London.
It applied for an IPO here 18 months ago.
Now, it hasn't had the approval for the IPO because there's sort of been a regulatory problem between the UK and the Chinese regulators.
They basically failed to agree on a sort of appropriate language to use in the risk disclaimer.
Anyway, what's happened in the meantime is Sheen has confidentially filed for an IPO in Hong Kong.
I think what they're hoping to do here is to basically sort of threaten the UK, if you like, with losing the flotation in order to spur the regulators to soften the requirements.
So this is really interesting for London because IPOs here in the UK have really, or fundraising from IPOs in London this year have sunk to a 30 -year low.
So a story we're watching quite closely.
Next, Samsung and far worse than expected operating profits for the second quarter.
What's gone wrong? Yes, so they fell for the first time since 2023, as you said, forecasting a 56 % drop in operating income for June.
Basically, what we're hearing from Samsung is that the profits fell.
They're citing an inventory write -down following the US curbs on those Chinese -bound AI chips.
But I think what we're also seeing here is that Samsung, the chipmaker, is actually losing ground in the AI market to its rivals, SK Hynix, I'm sure I pronounced that wrong, but, and also Micron Technology.
And these US restrictions, though, are also hindering, basically, its ability to turn around its chipmaking operations.
So, yes, bad news for Samsung.
That's been a couple of hours since we've analysed geopolitics through the value of Tesla shares, so let's see how they're doing in the context of the feud between Donald Trump and Elon Musk starting up again.
Yeah, so actually Tesla is on the rise today, just modestly up around 2 % after a steep fall of 7 % yesterday.
But this fall that we saw yesterday was basically on that announcement by Musk that he was looking to start a new political party amid his feud with Trump.
Now, this sort of return to political activism by Musk is contrary to what he said or what he promised to shareholders.
And it's just this concern that we have over the damage to the brand, the damage to Tesla brand, which is been hurting the share price, as we have seen previously when he got into politics back in the day with Trump.
Fiona, thank you. Now, Riyadh in Saudi Arabia from today becomes a hub of big screens and big leather chairs at the Esports World Cup.
This is an annual tournament celebrating international competitive gaming, an industry that's grown to be worth an estimated $2 .1 billion.
Thousands of fans expected to cheer on their favourite players in arenas in Riyadh, with, of course, many more following online around the world.
Kieran Walsh is a professional FIFA eSports player will be out in Saudi Arabia in a couple of weeks time now he joins us live from Cork in Ireland Kieran thank you for being with us what's it like when you're in the middle of the eSports World Cup paint the scene for us yeah I suppose it's an extreme rush it's exhilarating like every other sport but I suppose the thing with eSports it's going through a bit of a boom and and this workup in Riyadh is uh it showcases that um you know when I started out playing esports five years ago um the prize pools were nowhere near this like with the the prize
pool in Riyadh is is up to 70 million dollars this year um which is just it's you know it's a it's a eye -watering amount of money in any language so um yeah just to rush when you know that money's on the line and and there's people supporting you out there it's uh yeah it's a dream come true really.
How do you rise from playing FIFA, as many, many listeners will do, in their own house and possibly playing it against someone else who's elsewhere in the world, to being up for part of the prize pot of $70 million?
How does that work?
Yeah, well, I suppose my journey kind of came through COVID.
There was a big boom in esports at that time as well and I was lucky enough to be picked up by a professional esports team which is called Wild and we're based here in Cork City so I was yeah obviously very lucky to be scouted by them and taken on as part of their academy and through that it was just a lot of hard work a lot of support from them you know our our training as esports athletes is very similar to that of let's say traditional athletes you know I've had support from performance and mental coaches and nutritionists personal training you know it's not just you don't need to just train on the console
and you need to train the mind and the body as well so it's a very professional well i get the mental side of it help us with the nutrition and the personal training though why do you need that yeah well i suppose if if you're sitting at a console for for up to you know a tournament could run for maybe eight hours in a day and you're going to need some core strength and you're going to need to know how to to to uh to take care of yourself with the with with the food as well to keep the energy levels up and and to keep the mind sharp okay and is there big money sponsorship and a fan base and all
those things that you'd associate with more physical sports yeah and i suppose it's it's growing and we're still at a very early stage of esports but um yeah uh with more viewers and with tournaments like this it just brings more eyes brings more sponsors and i suppose we're we're looking up here in cork to some great partners and we We recently opened this new national facility, the National Esports Centre in Ireland, which is a huge moment, you know, to have a dedicated facility that's kitted out for gamers across the country.
Well, really good luck when you get out there.
What's your personal aim?
Oh, my personal aim.
When are you there?
Oh, that's a tricky question now.
I suppose I'd like to place into the prize money.
That's number one. I know a lot of people will say that it's nice to just be there and take part, but deep down, we all want a cut of the 70 million, don't we?
Thank you. Good luck here, and thank you very much indeed.
That's esports professional Kieran Walsh with us live on World Business Report.
And from me, Andrew Peach, thank you for listening.
