Trading with the USA

Business Daily

BBC

News, Business

4.4 • 796 Ratings

🗓️ 20 October 2020

⏱️ 19 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When President Trump came to power in 2016 he vowed he would scrap the international trade agreements he believed had cost a huge number of US jobs, and declared his intent to tip the trade balance back in America's favour. He wanted to take on China and what he saw as its dominance in the global marketplace.

How has this 'America First' policy worked out in the ensuing four years, and what has it meant for the US's trading partners?

As part of our look at the US elections 2020: and What the World Wants, Manuela Saragosa examines whether President Trump has succeeded in his aim, and she finds out what companies from China to Canada hope will come out of the next presidency. Manuela talks to Herbert Lun, managing director of Wing Sang electrical, whose factory is in China's Pearl River Delta. He produces electronic hair products for the American market - how has his business coped with the threat of US tariffs? While Mark Rowlinson, counsel at the United Steelworkers of Canada, tells Manuela that tariffs have brought some Canadian steel and aluminium producers - operating in an already very tight market - to the edge of bankruptcy.

The BBC's economics correspondent, Andrew Walker, is on hand to provide context and analysis throughout, and you can read more on the BBC website and hear more about the USA and the rest of the world, across the World Service this week.

Manuela and her guests also consider the alternative to President Trump - a Joe Biden presidency - and whether that would make it any easier to do business with the US. There might be a change of tone, but would he actually dismantle the protectionist policies of the last four years?

Picture: Trump Tower in New York. Credit: Getty

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. I'm Manuela Saragossa.
0:06.4	Coming up, what does the international business community want from the US presidential
0:11.1	elections? I would like to see a change in tone. Dial down the rhetoric because we're living
0:16.9	in a world after COVID. And I think that requires even more international cooperation.
0:22.5	President Trump promised it would be a case of America first when it comes to international trade.
0:27.7	And companies outside of the U.S. have certainly felt the effect.
0:31.4	We had some Canadian steel producers who were paying a million dollars a day in tariffs to export their products into the United States.
0:38.4	And you just can't keep doing that for any extended period of time without it taking a toll on your business.
0:43.9	That's all here in Business Daily from the BBC.
0:49.9	For years, left-wing politicians smiled and looked at American workers right in the eye and took
0:56.7	advantage of them and lied to them. Then they turned around and inflicted one corrupt betrayal of the
1:02.4	American middle class after another. But this time, there was one big difference instead of
1:07.9	an administration that sold out American workers and sold your company
1:11.9	out and couldn't have cared less for you, you finally had a president who stood up for the American
1:17.9	worker. I will always put American workers first. President Trump speaking in a campaign video
1:26.8	put out by the White House in August this year.
1:29.3	It pretty much encapsulates the aim of his international trade policies over the past four years.
1:35.6	The duty of a president is to put the nation's own citizens first.
1:40.8	That's why my administration swears by too simple but crucial rules buy American and
1:46.4	hire American. Well, buying American and hiring American has involved resetting trade relations
1:56.0	with the rest of the world, ripping up existing trade deals and confronting China. How much would a Biden presidency
2:02.9	change that? We'll hear from businesses outside the US and what they're looking for in the
	...

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