decoding the mixed messages of the US economy.
For every month.
This goes on.
There's more time for international customers to find somewhere else to go.
Once we get to Black Friday week, that's when things really escalate.
It's World Business Report from the BBC World Service.
I am Bissi Adebayo.
And today the split picture in the US economy as Cyber Monday spending surges but manufacturers warn of trouble.
Also, Serbia sounds the alarm over a refinery that could shut within days.
And the clock runs down on final bets to buy Werner Brothers Discovery.
Now.
All eyes are on the US economy right now, as President Trump continues to finalize trade deals and the Federal Reserve decides next week whether to cut interest rates again.
Well, last week we saw consumer confidence drop to its lowest level since April, as Americans grew more worried about the economy and jobs.
And today we got another important update and this time it's on manufacturing.
With the latest numbers showing 50%, factory activity shrinking again for the ninth month in a row.
Susan Spence is the chair of the Institute for Supply Management, which publishes the report.
We had another month where 67% of our panelists are saying, we're not hiring.
We're either laying off or not replacing people.
We have a sentiment.
That's for every positive comment in general.
There's almost four that are negative and tariff consumes the comments again.
So what sectors are mostly affected?
There are six that drive 72 of manufacturing GDP chemical products transportation, computer and electronic products food, beverage.
Machinery, petroleum.
So I pay special attention to those.
And the sectors specifically that are in strong contraction, that are part of the big six.
You know petroleum and coal, chemical sectors products, transportation.
And how much has the tariffs got to do with what we're seeing with these numbers there?
The most common comment.
I am not seeing comments about interest rates.
I saw maybe 3 overall of panelists talked about how difficult the government shutdown was, but that's relatively short term.
So it's really all about the tariffs.
It continues to be.
And we're in our 10th month of it.
Right.
What needs to be done to turn things around?
The confidence of these manufacturers has to come and that's only going to come with tariffs the customer, the end customer's confidence that the United States manufacturing sector is still where they want to be.
The other thing that I worry about is, for every month this goes on, is more time for international customers to find somewhere else to go, where it's a friendly or economic environment, where there's not volatility or an unknown, even worse, for what's going to happen with prices.
The manufacturing sector is doing everything they can to hold, I think.
They are, you know, would rather not backfill people that leave versus lay off.
But at some point You can't hang on to folks if the order book is not happening consistently every month.
We just need to have a recognition by the folks making decisions that these manufacturers are kind of shouting their truth.
And here's what's happening.
Please pay attention.
Please listen, understand the impact of the decisions.
And, you know, don't wave it off as, you know, a little short-term pain.
10 months is not short-term.
Susan Spence, Chair of the Institute for Supply Management there, or Peter Jankowskis is Vice President of Research and Analysis at Arbo Financial Services.
And he joins me now.
Peter.
Kami.
Do you think the government in Washington will be paying closer attention now with what we're seeing?
We're talking about consumer confidence falling last week and now manufacturing is weakening again today.
I think they are.
Certainly, as we get closer and closer to the midterm elections, they recognize that politically they're in a tenuous situation with the amount of discord that's out there, particularly with economy having been a big issue in the presidential election to start with.
So the fact that consumers are struggling is a big concern.
Of course, it's a concern.
And we heard Susan there talk about how tariffs are playing a huge role in this.
Of course, with the uncertainty around them,
From your perspective, is that wider lack of confidence starting to filter into factuality?
Absolutely.
They recognize that they're being asked to modify their supply chains, but without a consistency approach you know some recognized deals in place it's hard for them to make their plans.
And that's really what's playing into that confidence number, I think.
And what are we likely to see to change that situation or get a different number next month?
Well, I don't know if it'll turn that quickly.
I think we do need to see.
More concrete deals put in place, rather than the pattern that's developed of announcing one thing, using it as a negotiating tactic and then striking these small deals here and there.
Overall, there needs to be more consistency to the administration's approach, I think.
All right, Peter, just hang on a moment because we're still talking about spending in the U.S.
And although consumer confidence may be down, this past weekend has been one of those moments when spending worries often get pushed aside as shoppers chase Black Friday and Cyber Monday bargains.
I'm really experiencing sticker shock right now when I see the prices just for milk alone, eggs just butter.
My cheap dessert of Haagen-Dazs ice cream is a dollar more than it used to be.
I know they're expecting this mad flood of Black Friday shopping, but it's just not going to happen.
Everybody's conserving their funds.
I hope this gets better.
Eventually, people are not getting paid well enough to afford their life.
We will be more cautious.
Prices are high and that's something we're teaching our kids.
You know, they have to look at the prices and stick within their budget.
So it's teaching them an important lesson as well.
Everyone's looking at the prices, tightening their budgets as you heard there.
So how does this big shopping weekend compare with what we saw last year?
Adobe Analytics, which tracks online spending, says Cyber Monday is on course to be the biggest online shopping day of 2020.
2025, with more than $14 billion expected in online sales, and that's around 6% more than last year.
Here's Vivek Pandya from Adobe Analytics.
Yeah, absolutely.
Those days offer the steepest and best discounts, and that's what they've been really capitalizing on and taking advantage of.
But how much of those discounts have we actually seen though?
Because we spoke to a couple of shoppers last week and some of them were, you know, quite enthusiastic.
Some were cautious because some felt that there's really not much difference.
Well, what we've seen with discounts and some of them have been promoted as early as late September is they tend to stay in the sort of 10 to 15 range.
And across most categories it's going to vary, especially when we think about where apparel is versus electronic.
All these different categories.
But then once we get into Black Friday week, that's when things really escalate.
And we saw discounts go into the range of 18% to 28%.
So this is really a strong opportunity for consumers to take advantage of discounts that are the strongest that we can anticipate them being this year.
And what we find is many consumers when we survey them, many of them acknowledge that they would be discounts, but they really were waiting for Black Friday to get the best absolute pricing.
And this eventizing of sales, especially on things like the Prime Day event and the summer or other sort of President's Day and other types of weekend sales days here in the US or even bank holiday in the UK.
That's really what's prompting more activity on the part of the consumer.
Right.
And what are they spending on?
So we're seeing them really capitalize on the seasonal products.
So we think about the video game consoles.
This will be the first season with the Nintendo Switch 2.
We obviously have a new iPhone with the iPhone 17.
But we're also seeing them spend on outerwear, different types of products that are related in the cosmetic space.
So skincare products, we're seeing red light devices, and then many consumers are still kind of in their home and maybe they are thinking about moving, but the elevated interest rates have them staying put.
So many of them are kind of looking around and OK, maybe I can upgrade the mattress or replace the furniture in the house.
So that's where we're also seeing some uptick.
Do you get a sense really, that Cyber Monday still carries that same weight it used to, or are we seeing shoppers treat the whole week as one big window for deals alone?
With Black Friday, there was definitely a built-in cachet, and the same applied to Cyber Monday, in the sense that Cyber Monday was viewed, and it continues to be viewed, as the day like that's the last call for the, the strong, elevated discounts.
And then what we typically see, and what consumers see is these discounts start to weaken and kind of dissipate as we get closer to christmas.
They're still getting some value, but they're They're not as strong as what they can get out of the cachet marquee days like Cyber Monday and Black Friday.
So that's why we're going to expect to see a lot of spend velocity also kick up in the last hours of Cyber Monday, as consumers have their carts filled.
Maybe they've been considering things.
Now they're at Cyber Monday and they're going to close on some of those purchases.
That was Vivek Pandya from Adobe Analytics there.
Peter Jankowski is still with us.
He is Vice President of Research and Analysis at Arbo Financial Services.
Peter, I'm almost tempted to ask you what you've bought for Cyber Monday, but I'll just leave it at that.
Look at the strength of spending over this weekend, especially online.
How much of a lift do you think it actually provides to the wider U.S. economy?
Well, I think it certainly does provide a lift.
It'll be interesting to see how the overall season plays out there.
I think there is a danger with this go-around, given that people are so aggressively trying, hunting for bargains and recognizing that most of them are in this window, that we might see weakness in the remainder of the season and the overall season may not be as strong as people think.
Exactly, because we've seen consumer confidence dip and yet people are still spending on deals.
But what does this actually tell you about how households are actually feeling right now?
Well, they definitely are very cost-conscious, as was indicated in the interview earlier.
I even feel that way myself.
You're starting to really think about.
Should I be spending this much on this particular item and waiting to find the best prices that you can?
And when we look beyond the holiday sales bomb, what do you think this behavior signals about the months ahead?
I mean, Christmas, of course, is just around the corner as well.
Are we looking at a sign of resilience, or could we see shoppers pull back once the discounts disappear?
I think that's a real concern that we might see that sort of a pullback.
Also, with some of the bigger ticket items, people talk about the K-shaped economy.
A lot of the concern is in the lower income people, the people living paycheck to paycheck, who don't have stock portfolios.
The stock market, of course, has done well.
So those that have stocks don't feel that same sort of pressure and they're likely a source of much of the spending that's really going on right now.
All right.
Hang on a moment, Peter.
We're turning to Jamaica now, where the country has just been promised a major boost as it rebuilds from Hurricane Melissa, which struck in October.
International lenders, including the Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean, the International Monetary Fund Fund and the World Bank, say close to 7 billion could be made available over the next three years to support recovery and reconstruction.
Milton Walker is Head of News at the Jamaican Gleaner and he joins us now.
Milton, many thanks for joining us.
Tell us how this news is landing in Jamaica today?
Well, with some relief, because we do need lots of money to rebuild pretty much.
The western half of the island has been badly devastated.
Infrastructure hospitals schools, police stations, fire stations, clinics have all been badly damaged or, in some cases, destroyed.
So there will be significant funding that will be required in order to get Jamaica back on its feet.
So it's certainly welcome news.
I can only imagine.
And it's been a month really since the storm.
What does recovery on the ground look like now?
You've described the extent of the damage that we've seen, but in the areas which are hardest hit by the flooding and the landslides, what's the latest situation?
A lot of persons obviously, are still homeless.
Uh, many persons have made um do with temporary fixes.
Put tarpaulings over to cover the, the roof that went with the um the wind.
And uh, They've set up, for example, three field hospitals, one in Sablamar, one in Black River and one in Falmouth, and a mobile clinic as well in eastern Westmoreland, where the hurricane made landfall.
The government has said it's going to be importing about 5000 container homes as a temporary solution.
I think tents might be part of the mix as well to all these persons who are made homeless.
Now, many of those persons were in wooden houses simply because they didn't own the land and they couldn't obviously build concrete structure and land they didn't own.
And that's one issue that the government says they're going to be working on assiduously to correct.
There is a programme in place, but it's very slow and very painstaking, and he's appointed a cabinet minister to oversee that process.
And it's a problem particularly in Westmoreland Parish, which suffered perhaps the worst and sent Elizabeth
All right Peter, quickly really, how is the government responding, or what sort of response should be governed, or are the people expecting from the government right now?
Well, people are expecting help.
They want the roads to be cleared and repaired in other cases.
They need the landslides to be fixed.
There are some roads where there are breakaways and some bridges that have been damaged.
And I think a couple have been destroyed.
They also want the facilities to enable life, you know, to get back to normal, which means restoring power.
The power company today has said that 80% of its customers have power.
Now that sounds high, but in some areas like Westmoreland Parish, Hanover Parish and Saint Elizabeth it ranges from perhaps 80 to 95 without power in those communities.
All right, Peter, thank you very much.
We'll have to leave the conversation at this point.
Milton Walker, Head of News at the Jamaican Cleaner.
You're with World Business Report from the BBC World Service.
We're now in Serbia, which is one in just a few days away from a major crisis.
Vucic says the country's biggest oil refinery may have to shut down unless the United States grants it a licence to keep operating under sanctioned rules.
Our Balkans reporter Guy Delaney tells us more.
Mr Vucic said...
We'll have a big meeting on Tuesday morning, and we have to prepare all the moves by then.
So what it means is that the position as far as the United States sanctions does not appear to have changed and it doesn't look like it's going to change over the next few hours or so.
And that's the important thing, because if the refinery that is operated by Nice, which is under these sanctions, isn't given the go-ahead to bring in more crude oil in those next few hours, then it'll have to stop operations completely.
And what would that mean for the country?
It's a very big deal because Nice is the national oil company in effect, even though its majority owners are Russian, which is to say Gazprom and Gazpromneft.
And it provides more than four fifths of Serbia's petrol and diesel and almost all of its jet and heavy fuels.
So if you've suddenly got a player like this, that's in effect taken out of the market, that's an enormous problem.
Now, Nice also operates the only refinery in the country, so it's not like these products that the current Nice refinery is producing can be easily replicated through other sources.
So the kind of things that Mr Vucic has been talking about in terms of getting things ready and preparations being made.
That's involved negotiations with neighboring countries.
So Hungary, Greece. and Austria among them, the oil companies of those countries.
Serbia has been in negotiations with those countries to increase their provision of both oil and oil derivatives.
To Serbia it says that it's got reserves in place that will get them through at least a few months.
And the big thing now for Serbia, of course, is that nobody panics when the refinery has to cease operations, as it looks like it's going to do.
I was in Belgrade a couple of weeks ago.
Nobody was queuing at the... petrol stations to fill in the panic.
But of course the authorities know that can change if people get a sense that the fuel is going to run out.
And it's not just fuel that's been impacted, because the government is also saying that this shutdown could affect Serbia's entire financial system, even payment cards.
Well, the issue that's happening with the payments, that's very specifically with Nice, is that Visa and MasterCard won't process any payments that Nice would have been able to process from its retail outlets, its petrol stations.
They've ceased to process those payments since the US implemented the sanctions in October.
And that's obviously been problematic for anybody who's buying petrol or other products From Nice petrol stations.
They've had to pay with cash or the certain kinds of cash cards that people can use within Serbia and no further afield.
And that was being a big problem for foreign visitors coming down the motorway, stopping at a service station and suddenly finding they didn't have the means to pay for refilling their tank.
Thanks.
Our Balkans reporter Guy Deloney there.
Well, Australia's communications minister has told the BBC she's not backing down, despite growing criticism of the plan to ban under-16s from major social media platforms from December 10.
The government says their aim is to keep children safe from cyberbullying and harmful content.
But the tech companies are unhappy and there's already a legal challenge.
Our Australia correspondent Katie Watson has more from Victoria.
The sound of the security code on the Barnes family lockbox marks the end of the nightly digital detox for the four teenagers in this house.
Their phones are released.
The internet is switched back on.
These are tough rules imposed by their parents to try and keep them from getting into trouble online.
But now, with this new government ban looming, their digital freedom is about to be curtailed even more, and 14-year-old Will is not impressed.
They don't realise how much of our life is actually on social media, and I think they just have to realise that it's a different world that they grew up in, compared to us.
This one is for the mums and dads.
I want kids to have a childhood.
I want them off their devices and onto the footy field and onto the netball courts.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has sold this as legislation to keep kids safe and give parents peace.
It's about protecting teens from algorithms and endless scrolling, and covers a handful of the most prominent platforms, including Snapchat, YouTube and TikTok.
The onus is on the social media companies to take reasonable steps to make sure under-16s don't open an account on their platforms.
If they fail to do so, companies could face fines of as much as £25 million.
The evidence is now that seven out of ten Australian kids are suffering harm online.
Speaking to the BBC, Australia's communications minister Annika Wells said the law was necessary because companies had failed in their duty to protect kids.
They have had 15, 20 years in this space to do that of their own volition.
Now, and the harms that are coming through by independent research demonstrate it's not enough.
We feel that they have more of a social responsibility as social media platforms than they have signed up for themselves, so we have made it the law.
We are very much concerned with doing our duty to Australians and Australian taxpayers who pay us to look after good public policy.
As the school year draws to a close, at Padua College, the short drive from Melbourne, few kids are celebrating.
Their long summer holidays are looking a bit different this year.
My life would be impacted significantly, as I do use it every day and it is definitely my number one source of communication, like Snapchat and stuff.
Well, I think it will have a pretty good impact get me off my screen a bit, which is actually really good.
I want to get off my screens more but it's just A bit harder to do than I expected.
Their mums and dads are thinking through the consequences at a parents' evening.
I knocked on the door, no answer.
I opened the door and he'd taken his life.
Wayne Holdsworth is talking about his lived experience of the damage of social media.
Two years ago, his son Mac, killed himself a victim of sexual extortion after an online interaction with what he thought was a young woman, but turned out to be a middle-aged man.
In the audience, tears and much shaking of heads from parents who've come for advice on how to steer their teens through the changes.
I think the implementation of it is garbage.
I needed to have something that actually has teeth and has a consequence for the social media companies and possibly parents and children.
It's a good thing.
There will be some kids who are probably more shy in real life that maybe it might have a negative impact on, but I'm hoping not for us.
Katie Watson reporting there.
Well, Warner Brothers Discovery is back in the headlines today, with reports saying this is the final day for potential buyers to submit fresh bids.
The company put itself up for sale last month and we know Paramount Skydance, Comcast and Netflix all made initial offers last week.
And this move we see comes after Werner Media Discovery merger in 2022, which left the combined company managing a substantial amount of debt.
Peter Jankowski is still very much with us.
Peter, why do you think the bidding process has been kept open right up until today?
Well, they certainly have three very interested parties and they're trying to do the best they can to maximize the return for their shareholders.
And let's talk more entertainment news.
Disney's Zootopia 2 has had a huge Thanksgiving weekend, taking in around $556 million worldwide.
This is a make or break assignment.
And Peter, we've seen it perform well, especially in China, hasn't it?
Indeed, I think it was about 250 million there, the second largest opening that any film's ever had in the Chinese market.
And if people are, you know, we're talking about how people act. cautious of spending.
They're in the US, but they're willing to, you know, spend money to go see the movies.
Well, it's a good way to have some entertainment for a couple of hours at a relatively low cost.
When you're looking at 10 or 15,
It's not a big ticket item, if you will, so people are... easier to convince to do that, I think.
Especially at this time of the year, you know, it's December and it's a crucial time for the cinema.
Indeed, it's been a difficult year for movie theaters and they're definitely hoping for a big finish.
All right.
It's always a pleasure talking to you, Peter Jankowski, Vice President of Research and Analysis at Arbor Financial Services.
And that's it.
From World Business Report, don't forget to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Bisi Adebayo.
Thank you for listening.
