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Hello and welcome to World Business Report on the BBC World Service.
Will Bain with you today.
Great as always to have your company.
Coming up today, Nigeria's finance minister assures the World Service, the country's economy is turning a corner.
But does it feel like that for Nigerians trying to make a living?
We'll be live in Lagos very shortly to see just that.
Also today, ahead of President Trump's inauguration on Monday, a warning from the former head of the World Trade Organization.
Today, Mr Trump is more dangerous for international trade than Mr Xi Jinping, Although, although, I will recognise that Mr Xi Jinping also has a bit of cleaning to do at home.
Yeah, more from a really interesting chat with Pascal Lammy, the former head of the WTO about trade and tariffs to come.
And as you heard in the news, those concerns are echoed by the International Monetary Fund as well today, which says tariffs could raise trade tensions, lower investment and disrupt global supply chains.
So we'll be discussing that in more detail a little bit later on on World Business Report.
Remember, if you want to get in touch with us about that or anything else you hear throughout the programme today, our WhatsApp number is plus 44 for the UK 330 678 3033.
And remember, we do still want your thoughts.
We'd love to hear your insights, I guess, as well.
And what a Trump president on World Business Report.
Let's kick off, though, with some breaking news in the last kind of 20 minutes or so.
It's been announced that TikTok will be banned in the United States or must be sold.
The Chinese owned social media app, more than 170 million users across the United States.
So significant news for many.
Let's get the very latest with our North America business correspondent, Michelle Fleury.
Michelle, thanks as always for being with us on World Business Report.
So the deadline was meant to be Sunday.
We now know for now what TikTok circumstances are.
just perhaps recap a little bit of the of the whys and what we found out today yeah so this has been a battle that's been raging on now for several years pitting uh the parent company of tiktok the chinese firm bite dance against the u .s government which ultimately resulted in a law being passed which required
bite dance to essentially cut ties with tiktok or else face a ban.
And that law came into effect, or that sort of ruling gave the company a year to sort of complete this.
And it goes into effect on Sunday, unless TikTok is sold, but there are no indications that's going to happen.
The company had gone through various appeals.
They had joined up most recently with several influencers or content creators, I should say, to try and kind of appealed this on the grounds of free speech it went all the way to the supreme court the highest court in the land and they have just issued their opinion essentially upholding the law that required
tiktok to be sold or banned as always with american politics and you're going to be on the program with us on monday michelle where we talk about lots of these things and uh how clear -cut they are is to be seen we'll talk about that in just a moment but you mentioned those content creators we were chatting
earlier in the day here at the BBC to some of those businesses who use it rely on it and making a living from it Cassie Sorensen is one of those Cassie Sorensen better known on TikTok a small biz Cassie she's from the state of Arizona has been making content on TikTok since 2020 and last year she made
more than $150 ,000 on the platform she told Felicity Hannah what losing TikTok would mean for her business.
I make the majority of my money on TikTok with a UGC content platform within TikTok.
So UGC is user generated content.
And those are videos that are for brands.
So we make ads for brands that they run on the TikTok platform and no other social media platform offer.
For myself personally, I have been able to diversify to other social media platforms over the years.
But like I said, other platforms don't offer as many monetization opportunities that TikTok does.
And so in a way, it would be like starting over for me as far as trying to recover some of that income that I'd be losing from losing TikTok.
So that's Cassie Sorenson there.
There, Michelle, is a bit of the pushback from users.
Already, we know, an op -ed in the Washington Post newspaper, for example, earlier this week from the incoming Trump administration, that they too might want to look at this again, right?
Right. Yeah, I mean, you know, this is the curious thing about this whole case is if you kind of went back in time, the person who originally kind of raised concerns about TikTok was none other than Donald Trump.
But since then, he's had a change of heart, perhaps the fact that there are 170 million users on the on the platform.
And we've just heard from one of them who might be pretty upset come Sunday, if this ban goes forward.
Maybe that has kind of fed into into his change of heart, but he has been outspoken, certainly during the election campaign, saying that he doesn't want this to move forward.
And in fact, we know that just today he held a conversation leader to leader with China's Xi Jinping, in which TikTok came up.
The other thing to remember also is that TikTok CEO Shoju will actually be sort of sat there and attending the inauguration of Donald Trump for his second term on Monday.
It's a sign of how serious he is about trying to do something to make sure this doesn't go ahead.
And it points, doesn't it, to an interesting, if not tension then, an interesting discussion that's going to go on in the new, soon -to -be administration in the US, doesn't it, between free speech, which we know lots of those people are very keen on, from Elon Musk to the President Trump himself, but also China scepticism.
That's going to be kind of fascinating, isn't it, with a whole bunch of companies.
Well, I mean, I think in the case of the question of the law, you have America's highest court issuing an opinion, essentially settling it, going, in this case, yes, we take free speech very seriously.
But the fact that you're talking about a Chinese parent company, it doesn't necessarily apply to them.
And national security concerns take precedence.
And that sort of settled that.
I think what it does raise, though, is that question of what does this do to US -China relations?
Is this just a harbinger of more to come because we know Donald Trump, certainly we heard this week from Scott Besant, his pick for Treasury Secretary, talking about how President Trump, the law, you have America's highest court issuing an opinion, essentially settling it, going, in this case, yes,
we take free speech very seriously.
But the fact that you're talking about a Chinese parent company, it doesn't necessarily apply to them.
And national security concerns take precedence.
And that sort of settled that.
I think what it does raise, though, is that question of what does this do to US -China relations?
Is this just a harbinger of more to come?
Because we know Donald Trump, certainly we heard this week from Scott Besant, his pick for Treasury Secretary, talking about how President Trump, incoming President Trump, is very unhappy about unfair trade practices, of which he views China as sort of a major culprit.
So there are lots of reasons for tensions in this relationship ahead and it's fascinating to see that you've got this conversation between the two leaders taking place just days before the inauguration.
We're going to have lots to talk about on Monday aren't we?
I'm glad you're with us for the full half hour.
Looking forward to having you there.
More of Michelle as I say on Monday with me on the programme and also our economics editor Faisal Islam going to be with us as well to talk through everything inauguration on Monday's World Business Report.
You're with WBR on the BBC World Service.
We're going to shift for a moment.
We are going a return to America and more on the inauguration.
But I want to take you to one of Africa's biggest economies first because interesting discussion this morning on our Newsday programme here with Nigeria's finance minister.
Despite protests over changes to fuel subsidies and runaway price inflation touching almost 35%, Oluwale Edun insisted the Nigerian economy was turning a corner.
Here's more of his chat with Newsday's Catherine Birrahanga starting with a question about whether he empathised with those struggling with changes to that fuel subsidy policy.
Yes, we need to very much empathise with the fact that the costs of reform are front -loaded.
The costs come before the benefits, but the benefits have started coming out.
And because the costs are front -loaded, Mr President had promised from the start that there would be interventions on behalf of the poorest and most vulnerable.
And that's why there are direct benefit transfers going out every day.
You talk about benefits there.
We spoke to you nearly a year ago, back in February 2024.
At that time, you said we are focused on bringing down inflation.
We are addressing the cost of living spike.
But the reality today is that inflation in your country is still out of control at 35%.
So you're not achieving those goals.
Well, listening to that was Dr.
Chinieri Almona. Dr.
Almona is the Director General of the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
Joining us live from there now, Dr.
Almona, welcome back to World Business Report.
Thank you for having me.
Good afternoon. Minister was quite upbeat there.
Do you feel like that?
Do your members feel like that?
Certainly not. I do agree with some of the things he has said.
But for instance, he says that with the reforms, the cost to be front loaded.
To that, I agree. The effort of governments to try and reduce the pressure on the common man isn't coming through on the streets.
It certainly isn't affecting my members as it should.
How is that manifesting itself, that pressure?
Well, so costs are on the increase.
So inflation is rising because of food inflation.
Interest rates have gone up and it's still going up.
Therefore, my members can't access funds to expand or do business.
So the cost of doing business is extremely high.
Because that cost of borrowing to try and tackle the inflation is so high, people can't borrow money to expand, hire more people, that kind of stuff.
Absolutely. What should they be doing?
What could they be doing?
Well, several things.
When I listen to him and several things that government officials have said, I come up feeling, well, I should be optimistic, but I'm cautious about that because it depends on to what extent they follow through on what they have said.
And what's your level of trust on that?
What's your level of belief?
Do they listen to you, for example?
It's not very positive because in the past we've seen that happen.
For instance, I'll give you an instance.
About so many months ago, we heard that government was going to put in place the capacity to import food, just to reduce food inflation, the capacity to import rice at no duty cost.
and they gave it a three -month time for that.
That time passed, many months passed.
And we just heard about the first shipment just recently.
So that's like for the entire period of time, we haven't gotten benefit for something the government said will happen.
So if they said they want to make a reform, they have to flow through and implement effectively and on a timely basis for it to affect the common man on the street and that isn't happening.
Sounds like work to do then.
A lot of work needs to be done.
And trust to be rebuilt.
Well, yeah, because there's a trust deficit.
I don't know about rebuilding.
That creates trust because Nigerians have been suffering for too long.
And if you think about when they said the subsidy gone, it happened immediately.
So why is it that when you then have positive reforms that can affect the people, it doesn't happen immediately?
So it's important for government to say what they want to do and actually do it.
We also want to see some level of accountability and transparency in the process of implementation because you can't say one thing and then many months later we hear nothing and then there's a tiny drop.
So inflation is constantly rising and we've been talking about security in the farmyards.
So if food inflation isn't coming down, inflation can't come down.
Really interesting.
Should we have Becky on the program again to chat through it all?
Dr. Chinnery Almona, the Director General of the Lagos Chamber of Commerce And industry more of that interview, of course, on the Newsday podcast, and you can actually hear on the Africa Daily podcast, really interesting discussion about rental prices in Nigeria as well.
A lot going on in the economy there, isn't there?
Plenty going on, as we were saying, with the US and global trade, global economy as well.
Shanti Kellerman is always on a Friday with us, Chief Investment Officer at M &G Wealth in London.
Shanti, great as always to have you back on the programme.
Thanks. This warning from the IMF, not a great surprise, is it?
I suppose it's not telling you guys in the market anything you didn't know about, well, there could be a bit of uncertainty around trade policy coming.
Yeah, so we've been through the phase of we didn't know who was going to be in charge politically.
And now we just don't know what all the policies are going to be.
And the good news is hopefully we'll find some of that out soon.
The IMF upgraded its forecast for US growth to 2 .7 % for next year.
And that's before including anything that Trump might do.
So maybe there's room for upside or downside.
We saw a kind of stampede in the market after President Trump, soon to be president again, Trump won the election, didn't we?
Do you think from next week, is that sort of stock market rally likely something we'll see again, or is it sort of a wait and see at this point?
So I don't think anyone will have sold out until they know what's going to happen, because, you know, we could get, you know, there's a lot of different things that could be announced.
Some of them could be really positive.
There's also some things on his list like, you know, let's put tariffs on everyone that would be quite negative.
So I think we could get a fair amount of movement in markets depending on what's announced next week.
You also can't forget about the rest of the world.
So even though, you know, the US growth is higher, we still have the IMF forecasting in the UK to grow at 1 .6%, Eurozone at 1%.
So at least it's positive, even if it's not.
Yeah, and a quick look on the flip.
I guess the big flip of that side was China.
And we had that data out this morning that we talked about on the World Service.
What did you take away from the GDP number there?
They reported what they had to.
You can never really fully trust those numbers in some way.
They said that growth was a bit higher in Q4, which does make sense because they started doing a lot of policy stimulus.
But again, they'll have their challenges ahead with potential tariffs coming in.
So I think it's hard to say job done, case closed.
Yeah, absolutely. Going to be a busy week next week.
I think when we round all this up with you next Friday, going to be lots to talk about, isn't there as always?
Shanti, great to have you on the programme.
Shanti Kellerman there of M &G Wealth here in London.
You're with World Business Report on the BBC World Service.
Yeah, on Monday, come Monday, we'll be talking about it a lot on the programme.
We'll be just about an hour or so away, in fact, when we do our early edition of World Business Report from the inauguration of President Trump and hundreds of thousands of people expected in Washington, D .C.
for that. So what does it mean for business in the city?
Is it a good or bad thing having all those people and all the extra security in place as well?
Alexander Turk has been finding out.
Here at the U .S. Capitol in Washington, D .C., the recent snowfall is melting to slush.
Just in front of me, on the west lawn of the Capitol building, President -elect Donald Trump will take the oath of office next week.
All around me, preparations are underway for the inauguration.
Black fences, about 10 feet high, have been set up around the Capitol.
Hundreds of thousands are expected to attend the ceremony.
So, what does the inauguration mean for local businesses on Capitol Hill?
I stopped into Pete's Diner, just a couple blocks down from the Capitol.
The fences are here, too, running along the street outside the diner.
I asked Gum Tong, the owner of Pete's Diner, how the security perimeter has affected her business.
Even our local customers that live on the hill have a hard time to get around all those fence to come to us.
So ever since the fence came, get up since last week, our business is not even 10%.
Basically, we don't even have nothing to do because nobody is able to get around the fence and come to us.
Don't even talk about all the tourist people that come to visit that doesn't know the area.
So we do not know on the inauguration day, regardless of how many people you're expecting on the hill.
But I don't think we're going to have.
But we were going to be here because all the regular enforcement people that we've been like always here for them.
A minute from Pete Steiner down Pennsylvania Avenue stands D .C.'s oldest political bar, Hawk & Dove.
General Manager Leah Kolb says she's expecting a bump in patrons on Inauguration Day.
I have definitely prepared as far as ordering, making sure that my beers are stocked, that my alcohol is stocked, that we're stocked fully in the kitchen for the food.
I have leaned towards the idea of getting some form of security just for safety.
So, on the day of the election, I did have security.
I had a solo security man who I gave him the task of being at the door, but, like, once every 30 minutes, circulating the entire restaurant, going upstairs, because we do have two floors, just making sure that we're good.
But what about the inauguration's impact on businesses that don't serve food and drink?
East City Bookshop's owner, Lori Gilman, said the store would be closed on Inauguration Day.
Just from people I've talked to, a lot of people are planning to go out of town who live in D .C.
and live in this neighborhood in particular because the fencing that's up and where people who lived here close to the Capitol are still pretty scarred from the crowds of January 6th in 2021.
Referring there to the insurrection at the Capitol when supporters of Mr.
Trump stormed Congress in an attempt to thwart the certification of President Biden's 2020 victory.
For the businesses around Capitol Hill, the inauguration seems like a mixed bag.
A brief influx of customers, at least those looking for a bite and something to drink, if they can find their way to a table amid the heightened security measures.
Alexander Turk there on preparations in Washington, D .C.
Well, all this week, we've been talking about potential tariff implications on our business daily programme and what those might mean for all of us around the world.
To round that series out, Ed Butler has been speaking with one of the most senior figures in the world on global trade, the former head of the World Trade Organisation, Pascal Lamy.
If Trump does enforce a 60 % tariff on Chinese exports and a 20 % tariff on others, This will be a big shock for world trade.
This will impact the whole economy.
If you were head of WTO again, how would you be attempting to respond to this situation?
Because it seems like an almost impossible kind of centrifugal power pulling countries apart right now.
I would make sure the non -US WTO members agree to a two -lines declaration, which says, given what Mr.
Trump has decided, A, we will exercise our WTO rights in taking, if necessary, retaliation measures within our rights in the WTO.
And two, we agree to prevent any protectionist domino contamination among us, and we still believe that a rules -based international trading system is good for us, for our economies, and for our populations.
Is it, though? I mean, there will be those who argue, even going back to your time as chief of the World Trade Organization, that it shortchanged emerging economies, poorer economies.
I suppose you could argue the US pulling out might be an opportunity for them, perhaps to have a greater position at the table.
I mean, I take this point.
The problem is that the US do that in raising tariffs, which will be terribly harmful for many of these developing countries harmed by this stupid protectionist policy.
And it is stupid because it starts from a stupid premise, which is that the US trade deficit is a weakness of America.
The US trade deficit is a strength of America.
The reason why the American people can consume more than they produce, which translates into a trade deficit which is generated by their relatively low saving rate, is because they have the world currency, which is the dollar, and which they can print dollar as much as they can, because everybody wants
dollar. Really interesting, wide -ranging chat between Pascal Lammy, the former head of WTO, with Ed there.
More on the Business Daily podcast, including whether it was a mistake when Pascal Lammy was the head of the World Trade organisation to allow China into it and where that's stored up a lot of the problems that we have now around the world in terms of global trade really interesting conversation so if you
want to hear more as I say download the Biz Daily podcast wherever you get yours from.
Let's round out World Business Report though with well what's been a pretty good Friday for one of football's biggest stars.
Dear Defenders, I've been reflecting on these last few years together.
Erling Haaland is a phenomenon.
Like any relationship, there's been ups and downs, highs and lows.
That's natural. The voice of the Norwegian striker Erling Haaland of the Premier League club Manchester City, defending at this moment Premier League champions Manchester City.
He signed the longest contract in the history of the Premier League and that's significant from a business and finance perspective.
Well, we think so. And we think Dr.
Christina Philippou, Associate Professor in Accounting and Sport Finance at the University of Portsmouth here in the UK, agrees with us too.
I think that's right, isn't it, Dr.
Philippou? Yes, it is.
It's very good from Man City's perspective for protecting value.
obviously there's less risk of losing that player or basically you protect the value of that player registration which is the allowing that player to kind of play for you so that's very good it means that you can get transfer fees in the future for that also lowers renegotiation costs in the future
because obviously if you've got to renegotiate a contract one or two times in that time period you won't have to because this is a nice long contract um so you kind of decrease your cost there um and you also decrease what we call uh amortization i was gonna say here's the word i've never heard so many
football fans in pubs up and down the uk and i'm sure in all football playing countries this word explain it from a non -accountant's perspective to uh to others around the world what do we mean by this and why is it significant and why are clubs using it more yeah so amortization is basically an annual
cost it's the amount of an asset that you use up in a year the asset being the player registration um and the player registration is effectively valued at what the transfer fee was plus um you know um agents costs and some other things kind of bummed into them yeah so what happens is every year you
say i've used up this much of the asset and that is the amortization cost so if we use um holland's original contract in 2022 which was 60 million euros roughly 50 pounds let's make it nice and easy over five years that's 10 million a year what they're doing what he's doing now um because they've used
up half of that so half of 50 is 25 over a five -year period that's five million so they've gone from 10 million a year to 5 million in a year in amortization by changing the contract if like me remember the podcast of this program is available straight away you can rewind dr philippo as many times as
you need to get that down but there's our accountability lesson today dr christina philippo associate professor in accounting and sport finance at the university of portsmouth thanks so much for your time
