There's always two sides in American politics.
This is one big, ugly bill.
This gift is being made possible by the largest tax cuts in American history.
And that was the biggest, most consequential bill they say ever passed.
But the legacy of this bill is also billions of dollars handed out to American newborns.
Welcome to World Business Report from the BBC World Service.
I'm Ed Butler and today we're looking at the specifics of Invest America, a controversial new White House initiative to give millions to American infants and give them the power to invest.
Also on the show we'll have the pre-installed tracking app that's now mandatory on all Indian cell phones, and why the Tamagotchi is making a comeback.
All of that to come, but President Trump has today been unveiling his administration's new plan to create investment accounts for millions of US children.
And in the process, it is hoped to create a new generation of capitalists.
The initiative tucked into the domestic policy mega-bill, the great big, beautiful bill, as Republicans have liked to call it is aimed at building nest eggs for kids.
The government provides each newborn over the next four years $1,000 in seed money.
And also, it should be added, private philanthropists.
The computer billionaire Michael Dell and his wife Susan are going to be shipping in with no less than 6 billion of their own money 250 per child to more children born before 2025.
The government is hoping to convince young people generally and their families of the benefits of investing in stocks and shares.
The president outlined the plans at the White House just a short time ago.
Trump accounts will be the First, I guess you could say, real trust funds for every American child, allowing family members employers corporations, generous donors to contribute money that will be invested and grow over the course of a child's life to be used for their benefit after they turn 18.
So, in other words, these are children that are going to an investment's going to be made, that investment's going to continue to grow.
We hope right.
We hope.
These accounts will track the overall stock market and will be 100 private property controlled by the child's guardians.
In honor of America's 250th anniversary, the Dells are announcing today that they are giving 25 million American children 250 each to save and to invest in their personal Trump account.
This will give millions of dollars, millions of children, middle-class families, a stake in American prosperity, a benefit from the rising stock market and a better shot at the American dream.
A better shot at the American dream.
There you are, joining me to discuss the plan.
Betsy Stevenson, a professor of economics at the University of Michigan, a former economics advisor to President Obama and also to Annika Green.
She's a Republican political strategist at Reach Global Strategies.
Annika Green, first of all, remind us, if you will, just how these... accounts are meant to work.
I mean, what's the structure of them?
You get this money as a child if you're born in the next four years.
That's for the main Trump account.
Yes, $1,000 if you were born in 2025 and beyond.
The IRS will issue those guidelines next July.
But just having a child and the child has a Social Security number, you're eligible to set that up.
But these Dell accounts are for children who are already born, who are aged 10 and under, who are living in a zip code in the United States where the median income is 150000 or less.
And they'll get 250000, which they acknowledge isn't a huge sum of money, but it may encourage those children's guardians to contribute and save for the future.
Citing research that shows that children who have accounts like these are more likely to graduate from high school, go to college and stay out of jail.
Right.
So it's kind of means tested the Dell donation, so to speak or it's targeted slightly more towards lower income families.
Exactly.
Now, Betsy, what do you think?
It sounds like truly a celebration of the American dream.
It's getting all Americans, whatever their income, a stake in the rising stock market which, of course, has risen pretty healthily in the last 15 years, or so far faster than most people's incomes.
You know, I think that's the idea.
You're going to definitely want to see how it's executed, to find out you know what the fees look like on these accounts and what kind of returns people actually get.
I mean, the comparison would be the education accounts of 529 plans.
And the tax... preferred status on that really helps families out a lot.
But sometimes the fees on those accounts are – they're higher than if you were just opening say, an equity account on your own.
So you know, this is the lesson that, as an economics professor, I always want my students to take away is what – matters is what kind of return you're getting, minus the fees.
So I can't wait to see the details here.
I do think for a lot of of kids, particularly from lower income households.
Their parents are struggling to find raising kids affordable in the first place.
So making the house payment, putting food on the table, paying for childcare.
And what we see is that those parents are failing to save for retirement themselves.
And so wondering whether those parents are actually going to be able to come up with the 5000 that parents are are eligible to save into these accounts for their kids.
You know, I think this is going to be another kind of program that benefits wealthier kids rather than lower income kids.
I mean, that is obviously debatable.
And I know it's been put forward by various Democrat candidates.
Congress people that there is, I suppose, an inbuilt advantage to those who are perhaps already familiar with the stock market and how it works.
But Annika Green, I mean.
I guess this will be celebrated as something that has to some degree bipartisan support.
Absolutely.
And it's just it's a really good start.
And that's what Michael and Susan Dell had said.
They came along.
They added to something that got passed in Congress, the big beautiful bill, the thousand dollars for for every infant.
And they're saying well, we're going to come along and try to capture, you know, and give some of these kids to the tune of 6 billion.
Very generous.
And their hope that they've said publicly is their hope is that other philanthropists will do something similar, will maybe add to these accounts.
They referenced.
I don't know the technical details of how it's true, but they have said on the record that the Big, Beautiful Bill made it easier for philanthropists to do things like this.
And I think, you know, the optics really are quite brilliant.
Because one of the criticisms of President Trump is, oh, he's so rich.
He's an example of income inequality.
Well, he's putting his money where his mouth is and trying to help every child in America.
That's admirable.
And regardless of your politics, if you're a philanthropist, you can't object to trying to help children.
Particularly lower income children have better life outcomes.
That's true, isn't it, Betsy?
Yes, although I think that sounds like parts of the story, I haven't heard that President Trump actually contributed some of his own personal money.
Do you know whether that's factually true?
I'm not saying he, I don't think that was implied.
It was just that he was supporting something that wasn't across the board.
He put his money where his mouth was, and so I was just a little surprised.
I wanted to make sure we clarified that.
Look, nobody's going to critique the idea of getting kids access online. to accounts.
And I just wanna be clear that I'm not talking about kids who already know about the stock market.
It's that a lot of the benefits here come from the tax advantage nature of it and being able to transfer money to your kids in a way that is tax preferred.
And this looks like another opportunity for that for higher income kids.
I don't want.
I mean, look the 1000 for the kids born between 2025 and 2028.
That is amazing for those kids.
And I think we're going to see a lot of really good social scientists study.
Does that make a difference in those kids' lives?
So stay tuned.
It might take us 20 years to get the results, but I think it's going to make some really interesting social science.
Annika, is this universal basic income?
Is this a plan that we were always talking about?
Is this what we're seeing now?
Is this somehow an experiment that we're going to start seeing handouts to everybody suddenly, even from the Republican right?
I think it's different in that there's always been an incentive in the tax code for people who have children.
You get a tax deduction and that's for everybody.
And if you're low enough income, you actually get money paid to you.
But in terms of investing in the next generation, I love that this isn't the government, purely right.
The Dells coming along and doing this.
This is the type of philanthropy that Americans used to really be known more for.
Now there were critiques over the past hundred years to be known that we're legitimate, that we need the safety net.
But I think more of this will really level the playing field.
And I love that it's voluntary.
Annika Green, Betsy Stevenson, thank you both very much indeed.
I'm also with Kuei Nguyen.
She's Chief Investment Officer at Equity Strategies for Research Affiliates based in New York.
Hi, Kuei.
I mean, what do you think of this savings idea?
It does suddenly seem to be pieces broken out.
In Congress, everyone's agreeing that, at least in principle, it's a good idea.
Certainly, it's a good idea.
It's an expensive idea, but I think it certainly will help kids in the long run.
Yeah, expensive.
Can America afford it?
I mean, this does come at a time when there's talk of bubbles and everything on the stock market.
What do you think?
Sure, the stock market is richly valued.
But if you're talking about kids that are just being born now and they're not going to be able to touch this money for 20 years, it's not a bad place to just invest.
Just set it, forget it. and look at it in 20 years.
I mean, if people actually do that with their retirement funds, I think that a lot of people would be better off.
Speaking of bubbles, the Bank of England has warned today that share prices in the US are at their most stretched since the dot-com bubble.
Are, And I guess there's a warning that companies exposed to AI specifically are materially stretched.
This is a warning.
It's getting more and more explicit by not just Bank of England but others, that You know people better watch out about diving too enthusiastically into the current US stock market.
What's your take on that?
Certainly the US stock market is not cheap, but as stretched as the tech bubble, I just I'm not sure about that.
I mean back then the SP was trading at 33 times earnings.
Right now it's trading at 25 times earnings um.
That's a significant gap.
You know you had cisco trading at um i don't know 200, 300 times earnings.
Nvidia, which is richly valued, is trading at maybe 50 times earnings.
So I see a lot of differences in what's Kwe and Wen.
We'll be talking to you more in a bit, but thanks for now.
The Indian government has ordered phone makers to pre-install a state-run cybersecurity app that aims to track stolen phones on all new devices and add it through system updates onto existing phones.
The move has sparked fresh concerns about privacy and some failings in the world's largest phone market.
The BBC's Archana Shukla reports.
The government cybersecurity app is currently optional on Android and Apple stores.
What's triggered concern is the new order making it mandatory on Apple every device, old and new, and the fact that it cannot be disabled or restricted, which leaves users with no choice.
Now the government says the app is a consumer protection tool.
It will help verify handsets and report telecom fraud, but digital right experts say this breaches citizen, Thank you, and it's on the device that access could be misused later.
It's significant as India is the world's largest phone market with over 1.2 billion mobile users.
Political parties here have called it a step towards state surveillance, and they are demanding a rollback.
The BBC's Archana Shukla.
Well Krishna Vishnubhotla is a vice president of product strategy at Zimperium, which is a mobile security company based in Dallas, Texas.
He's been following the progress of this app's development.
The Sancharsati app, as it's known, was being brought in.
It was introduced to really help people reduce the fraud that's been happening using their phone or their phone number or their device right.
You can block your phone, it's lost.
You can track it.
You can report. you know, unsolicited messages that you think are fraud via SMS or phone calls.
Things like that.
So it was really a citizen-centric initiative to help consumer, I guess, better manage his hygiene on his mobile device.
I mean, obviously there are lots of voluntary commercial apps similar to this, I guess, that are available to citizens in countries around the world, but the government claims, doesn't it, It's already saved 700000 lost phones using it.
There is another argument, though isn't there, that making it compulsory in this way makes it look a little sinister.
So I understand the intent, right?
The Indian market has about, what, 700?
100 million smartphones.
And if you take a step back, it's really important to understand one the way we use our smartphones.
They are at the heart of our digital lives right, personally and professionally.
Two, if you think about all the devices we have, mobile devices are the least protected, and every bad actor on the planet knows this.
So it's really important for us, as consumers, to recognize why it's important to protect our smartphones or tablets, because it's become now the entry point for scams for consumers.
Or even if I wanted to breach your employer.
They've just become the entry points because you don't have any security on.
That's true.
And data security is, of course, a very important thing.
I'm just curious why governments have to impose it as a compulsory thing for all smartphone users, because that is the point at which It starts for some people to have echoes of, for example Pegasus, the Israeli-made spyware that was so controversial, because it essentially allowed people anywhere who had access to that spyware to monitor every single kind of keystroke that a phone user was using.
Yeah.
If you keep the politics aside, right?
The other important thing that you mentioned is the reaction stemmed from the fact that, when you look at the permissions that any app asks for right,
They're normally quite a lot.
And the big problem here is that you never get to understand look at that screen as to why or how those permissions are actually helping the app.
Keep me safe, right.
That's where the reaction stems from is there isn't a clear mapping of permission to how I am safe.
And this is tricky because we're in the mobile app security business and there is no good place to put it.
And nobody really wants to read anything about the app.
I mean, when's the last time you read terms and conditions about an app you downloaded, right?
But that transparency is really important.
Any comparison with Pegasus, though?
I mean, you know, which was, of course, seen as incredibly intrusive and inconclusive.
Incredibly powerful.
No, nothing I have read at this point draws any comparison to Pegasus, right?
I think the reaction I'm seeing is stemming from the fact of hey, it's asking for a lot of permissions and we don't quite understand why.
Krishna Vishnubodhla.
You're with World Business Report from the BBC World Service.
Now for those of you of a certain age.
You may just remember seeing the video to songs like Dire straits money for nothing.
A constant feature, it seemed, in the early days of MTV, music television.
But now, in the era of streaming, dedicated music TV channels like MTV have begun to shut down.
Who needs the video when you've got the audio entirely on demand?
So is it still worth record companies even investing in this area of marketing?
Daniel Rosny has been finding out whether the music video still has a place in today's market.
Gone are the days when you'd sit in front of a TV switching between channels playing music videos.
Even MTV, the world's most recognisable network for music videos, is starting to switch off some of its dedicated stations globally.
If you're going to watch a music video at this point, you're likely watching it on your phone.
Amanda Klein is Associate Professor of Film Studies at East Carolina University and author of the book millennials killed.
The video star.
There were a lot of factors that led to the significance of MTV.
One of the big ones was you could finally kind of watch your favorite artists perform.
Acts that became very popular were very visually dynamic.
Big hair, you know, Duran Duran did so well.
Kiss, any kind of shtick.
But with the advent of social media, consumers now can have access to their favorite acts on TikTok or Instagram and no longer need to be told what music is cool.
Instead, they can type in on platforms like YouTube the music they want to watch and listen to.
Earlier this year, singer-songwriter Lewis Capaldi made his comeback after a two-year hiatus.
A video for his song Survive has been viewed around three million times on YouTube and was directed by Charlie Sarsfield.
And I think TikTok has skewed... the sort of like gauge of what's successful on YouTube now.
So unless you're on 100 million plus, is that a successful video?
Charlie has worked with Billie Eilish, Youngblood and former One Direction star Louis Tomlinson.
The needs of the music industry has changed a lot. over the last five years, let alone the last 20.
The music video is almost secondary to what everyone's consuming on a daily basis.
Now, it's not necessarily about making a video that suits the song necessarily.
Sometimes it's, how can we grab someone's attention?
Budgets used to rival mid-tier Hollywood films.
Take Madonna.
Reportedly.
Her videos for the songs Express Yourself, Die Another Day and Bedtime Story all cost more than US5 million to make.
Record labels now suggest artists posting on social media themselves can have as much of an impact on sales as music videos.
Samira Lightman-Stetter is Warner Music's vice president for its regional marketing team in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
It's not about just like one TikTok hit and then nobody hears of that artist again.
It's about building a long-lasting relationship.
The IFPI, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, which represents the recording industry worldwide, published a report earlier this year which said total global streaming revenue had reached more than US20 billion.
And streaming now accounts for 69% of recorded music trade revenue around the world.
Will Page is the former chief economist of Spotify.
This business is going to get bigger and bigger and bigger, because streaming can enter markets that the previous formats couldn't.
So for 2024, video was just 6% of total record label income.
But elsewhere in the world, it's a different story.
The South Korean genre K-pop is estimated to be worth more than 10 billion US dollars.
The visuals are driving its success with strong narratives and storytelling.
The future of music videos may not lie in the traditional blockbuster format, but in how artists, creatives and labels adapt to a world where attention itself has become the most valuable currency.
Daniel Rosny reporting.
You can hear more from him in today's Business Daily, wherever you get your BBC podcasts.
The Tamagotchi is formerly this year's most popular Christmas toy gift, at least for children in Japan.
That's according to a new survey of sales there.
It marks a dramatic revival for the toy, or is it a game?
I wonder.
First released almost 30 years ago, it's made by the firm Bandai.
Tamagotchis involve keeping alive a virtual pet inside an egg-shaped mini console by feeding cleaning, entertaining it.
I've been speaking about the enduring appeal of this toy, first launched in the 1990s, with an enduring fan Thuy Gray.
She runs a fan club for the Tamagotchi in Toronto, Canada.
It's a keychain-sized... egg-shaped kind of flat game with a screen.
There's three buttons, very simple.
Every game, every action you're doing is controlled by these three buttons.
And on the screen you're going to see like a little character.
A little sprite could be kind of like mythical, looking kind of blobular um, and that's your character that you're raising from childhood to adulthood until it has its own child, and then you continue with the next generation.
So this is cleaning up its poop.
What's the appeal?
I think Tamagotchi really sparked people's imagination for a few reasons.
It has all the benefits of a real pet without kind of the responsibilities.
There's a social element to the game, so it's not kind of like a video game that's very isolated.
It's bringing people together in unique ways, especially as there's a greater conversation about screen-free childhoods.
I think it's very interesting that this is a virtual pet with a very analog feeling.
Yeah, I mean, as you say, a virtual pet, you say a game.
It sounds like a misnomer, doesn't it?
It's just something you pet.
Exactly.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think video game is even the wrong term, because it's just such a unique product that it kind of doesn't neatly fit into any of these categories.
But if you can imagine if your toy teddy bear came to life...
For a day, that is what it's like to play the Tamagotchi.
What do you do with your Tamagotchi?
Oh, I play it every day.
I bring it to work.
When it beeps for attention at work, my co-workers know, like, mommy's busy.
And so yeah, it's a 24-hour experience.
You take care of it all day long.
You feed it, you clean up its poops, you send it to bed at night.
And that's also part of the appeal for people, because it is weaving play into every part of your schedule.
They're about to relaunch, I mean, or at least issue a new Tamagotchi.
For sure, yeah.
A lot of people don't know that Tamagotchi has continued making products consistently since the 90s.
So there's never actually been a break in...
Tamagotchi is being produced, and new versions are constantly being released.
So the newest version that was released this year, the Tamagotchi Paradise, has been super popular.
There's also versions that have been released in the past few years that are continuing to be sold.
And another interesting thing Tamagotchi has been doing is a lot of like brand collaboration.
So they'll release a Tamagotchi that's themed around Hello Kitty or themed around different anime characters.
So you're getting to kind of mash up worlds of different interests when you're playing Tamagotchi.
So you are raising children.
In fact, probably in your case, generations of children.
Exactly.
Are you surprised it's making a comeback?
I was at one point.
When I first started a Tamagotchi fan club and it quickly grew from 10 people to hundreds of people, I was surprised.
But then it started to make sense to me that this game would speak to people in this way.
I think that there's, since the pandemic, a real profound loneliness in the culture and a drive for connection that I think still pervades.
And Tamagotchi to me feels like a really unique way to reintegrate joy and play into our lives, connect with people in a unique way and also have fun.
Like.
It's about having fun and having little goals and accomplishments, of keeping this thing alive while you're also focusing on your own wellness and happiness.
I love those sounds.
She clearly does.
Tui Gray, Tamagotchi fan, Tamagotchi ambassador, it sounded like to me.
Chen Guanyin, hi there.
Research affiliates in New York, you're still with us.
Are you a fan?
Well, I didn't know about them, but now I am a fan.
And thank you so much for this segment, because now I know what to get my children for Christmas instead of a puppy.
Excellent.
Well, you know, we're always in for Christmas ideas.
But more seriously, the Italian fashion house.
I wonder your thoughts on this.
Prada, it has said that it has completed the takeover of its rival Versace.
It's paying 1.4... billion to the American company that owns Versace.
I mean, it's interesting, isn't it?
There seems to be more consolidation in this luxury sector.
The luxury sector has been challenged, right?
And Versace itself has been challenged.
It's a bit of an odd couple, because Prada is known for having fairly stayed.
You know, slimmed down looks and Versace is just so bright.
Indeed.
Guanyin, thank you very much indeed.
That's all we have time for.
You've been listening to World Business Report from the BBC.
Thanks for joining us.
