24/02/2017 BBC Business Live

Five million US factory jobs have been lost since

the turn of the millennium, but what's to blame?

We'll ask an expert later in the show.

Also in the programme - knock off - get outta here, go home early,

Japanese firms bring in a 3.00 pm finish -

Question is, can it really change a culture that has a word

And Wall Street did it again - wow on the Dow -

As you can see, Europe is slightly off today. We will tell you why.

And, this week on BBC News we've been looking at the issue

Later in the programme we'll speak to our producer

Johnny Cassidy gradually lost his eyesight when he was

talking to us about his unique experience of the newsroom.

Today we want to know - with Japan allowing workers to head

home early on a Friday - would you like to see this

Is it overkill or should employers be more sympathetic?

I tell you what, when you start at 4am in the morning, I don't want to

go to 3pm! "We want products made in America -

made by American hands". That was the pledge of US

President Donald Trump when he addressed cheering workers

at Boeing last week. And he continued the theme

on Thursday when he met with the bosses of more than 20 top

US companies at the White House - the likes of General Electric,

Lockheed Martin, Ford and Dell. He told them he plans to bring

millions of manufacturing Well, according to President Trump's

official website, since it signed the North American Free Trade

Agreement with Canada and Mexico - known as NAFTA - more

than two decades ago, America has lost "nearly one-third

of its manufacturing jobs". And I tell you what -

official numbers do seem America's Bureau of Labour

Statistics says 5 million factory That's left just 12.3 million

Americans employed in manufacturing - well under one in ten

of the workforce. Definitely a huge decline

from the one in four who worked But are bad trade deals,

and cheap Mexican and Chinese Or is it simply the

march of technology? One recent study by Ball State

University says the vast majority of these jobs -

85% - have gone Persuading companies to reverse this

trend could be difficult. The Boston Consulting Group

estimates that a human welder costs $25 an hour to employ,

while a robot costs less than a third of that - around $8 -

to do the same job. Dr Michael Plouffe, Lecturer

in International Political Economy Thank you for coming in this

morning. Let's start with this jobs issue. The latest figures we have

had out of America would suggest the economy is at full employment. If it

is at full employment, why is there a need to create more jobs there and

secondly, is it really full employment or is there more the

figures? The employment figures do not reflect the distribution of

employment in manufacturing has taken a hit over the last few years.

I would be optimistic about what these figures mean. They are likely

to be biased and there are people who have no chance of finding

employment. So that does not take into account the figures of people

who have given up looking for work? Exactly. When it comes to creating

jobs, given the information Aaron has told us, how realistic do you

think it is that President Trump could bring back these manufacturing

it would be difficult to do. He has it would be difficult to do. He has

floated the idea of a parallel law which has no prospect of lasting or

getting by without signing significant repercussions on an

international level -- the tariff wall. His best option is to provide

jobs and vocational training. Just touching on that, if Trump and his

team were being creative, he wouldn't be trying to get rid of

robots to put back humans into place because companies will not do that,

it is unrealistic, but they should be looking at creating completely

new industries as the world moves forward, in terms of technology and

things like that? Yes. Unfortunately this goes against the Republican

small government ethos. A small problem! We told you about the

meeting which happened yesterday, 20 big companies meeting President

Trump and it did seem to be big smiles, a lot of enthusiasm and

optimism, if we are saying he cannot bring back these manufacturing jobs,

the technology has moved on, why are these big CEOs not coming in with a

more demure expression. They were very agreeable yesterday!

My guesses they are being cautiously optimistic. Rather than the wall

which Rex Tillerson is trying to calm the Mexican government down

about, but there are other options which they could potentially benefit

a great deal from. Doctor Michael Plouffe from UCL, thank you for

joining us. Let's touch on some other stories.

Uber is being sued for stealing trade secrets

Waymo, set up by Google owner Alphabet, is taking legal

action against Otto, the self-driving vehicle business

that Uber bought last year for $700 million.

The lawsuit argues that former Waymo manager Anthony Levandowski

took information when he left to co-found the venture.

Uber says it takes the allegations seriously and will review

China for the first time became Germany's most important

trading partner in 2016, overtaking the United States,

which fell back to third place behind France.

German imports from and exports to China rose to $180 billion

last year, Federal Statistics Office figures reviewed by Reuters showed.

France remained the second-most important business partner

with a combined trade volume of $176 billion.

The United States came in third with $174 billion.

Heathrow airport says it served a record number

75.7 million people passed through its gates in 2016,

Cargo volumes were also up - so was revenue.

The boss is calling it a 'milestone year' -

partly of course because the UK Government has announced its support

China's internet giant, Baidu, has reported a fall

in its quarterly revenue following a government-driven

Sales fell a less-than-projected 2.6% in the fourth quarter after it

instituted measures to comply with regulatory restrictions

and cut the number of ads it displays alongside results.

Tim McDonald, in Singapore, has the details for us.

Good to see you, Tim! Hello. That is right, the latest results showed

that Baidu did not have a good last quarter. There was a government

crackdown on health care advertising in particular, which accounts for 20

to 30% of the company's search revenue. The reason for the

crackdown is because its student died after undergoing experimental

cancer treatment it discovered through the search engine. Revenues

have slipped by nearly 3%. Also it is in an intensely competitive

market and Baidu has two fend off competition from China's other

Internet giants. But it is bullish, predicting revenues to rise for the

first quarter of this year. OK. Tim, do you want to answer the pineapple

question now or not? I am OK with pineapple. There we go, that is what

we wanted! 24 hours late but good on you! We had been waiting.

The shares have been hit by a fall in the price of copper and other

commodity prices. Keep your eyes on Washington, we will be talking about

that very shortly. Click over to Europe because the European markets,

do we have them? I think so. They are not there! The markets are

supposed to follow suit but I tell you what, Wall Street, we will tell

you about that in a minute, Wall Street is powering on. The tenth

straight session of games. More records being broken, one thing

after an. Let's find out from an expert.

Joining us is Simon Derrick, Chief Markets Strategist,

Ken straight games, is that because of Trump or something else? -- ten

straight games. We have a cautious Fed, we also like the fact we are

not going to be calling China are currency manipulator yet. The story

is, the interest in Europe. We have rising concerns about political

events in the Netherlands, France and possibly Italy and Greece. That

towards northern Europe. It is towards northern Europe. It is

pushing it towards German bonds and pushing yields down. Bonds and

yields, bonds we are talking about government debt, the retainer get on

that investment. By lend money to Germany for the next two years, I

would get negative interest rates on that. I would have to pay .9 of a

percent. For the privilege of lending them money. If I had the

choice of lending them money or paying for a privilege or paying the

money to the US and receiving a 2% plus interest rate, what would you

rather do? That is keeping interest rates relatively speaking controlled

in the US. While I have got you on bonds, government debt, we heard

from the Treasury Secretary for the US yesterday. He mentioned something

which you don't hear about much, a 50 year bond, a 50 year debt. Would

that be America saying he, that be America saying he,

investors, we are going to sell you 50 years of debt? What they are

going to do is instead of borrowing money for 20 years or 30 years, they

are borrowing for 50 years. This is the story they have talked about for

the last three months. The idea is interest rates are so low, why not

borrow money for as long as you can. The fact that you will not get your

money back for another 20 years means that money will be in the

system for a little longer. It is also good for equities. But it is

bad for the dollar. If you look at the course of the last 12 hours, the

dollar has started to come under pressure on the back of that. That

is something with you to keep a close eye on. Simon Derrick, thank

you. You will be returning to discuss some paper stories including

the premium on Friday. Do you get early doors on a Friday? I am going

home now! No, you are not! See you in a minute.

And this week on BBC News we've been looking at the issue

Later in the programme we'll speak to our producer

Johny gradually lost his eyesight when he was a teenager and he'll be

talking to us about his unique experience of the newsroom.

You're with Business Live from BBC News.

Let's talk about RBS. The Royal Bank of Scotland has just reported

another massive loss. The bank - which is 72%

owned by taxpayers - is also planning cost savings,

which will mean job cuts The bank has lost ?7 billion in 2016

- that's more than three Our business correspondent

Theo Leggett has more. Was this a surprise? No, it didn't

come as a surprise at all. RBS is really still paying for the sins of

the past. If you remember, in the run-up to the financial crisis

around 2007, RBS was positioning itself as a major international

bank, huge ambitions. For a while it was, by some measures, the biggest

bank in the world, but overstretched itself and is still paying for the

consequences of that, still restructuring and on top of that

there was a fair amount of wrongdoing within the bank. You can

see that in today's figures. It had to set aside around ?6 billion to

cover the legal consequences of past actions, like the mis-selling of

mortgages in the United States, still being pursued by the

Department of Justice for that. That burden hasn't gone away and won't go

away for another year or so. On top of that big restructuring costs and

the bank is trying to reposition itself as a UK focused bank,

withdrawing its international ambitions, so there are

restructuring cost associated with that as well. Is RBS effectively a

zombie bank? That's one question we put to the chief executive of RBS a

short while ago. Certainly it's been a long period of time and this is

what happens when a bank goes wrong and you have to put it right.

Underneath, this is an amazing bank. We make ?1 billion profits every

quarter but then it is offset by the one-off charges, predominantly from

the past and that has been huge. This year alone 24 billion we have

put into the UK economy through lending, 320,000 home loans, ?9

billion has gone into small and medium-sized businesses to get the

economy moving. That's the sort of bank we really are underneath it

all, fantastic brands, fantastic people serving customers every day.

The big boss of RBS. Also thank you to Theo. Have a great weekend.

Always great having you on that. Bye-bye.

As part of our Disability Works coverage, this week here on the BBC

we've been exploring the experiences of disabled people in

We've had various guests on this show, focusing on the experiences

of disabled entrepreneurs and employees, and examining how

different businesses are innovating to help disabled people.

The BBC's Johny Cassidy has been central to the production

Thank you for joining us. Good to see you.

Glad to be here. Funny being on the side for a change. Yes, I was going

to say to our viewers, Johnny works in our department.

You are always e-mailing us for our inside track guests.

What is your experience, what is your disability, what caused it?

I am blind, can't really see too good. I lost my eyesight as you

mentioned in my teens. It started gradually going. I was beat up and

lost the eyesight in my right eye straightaway, and in my left eye it

gradually went. In some ways it's lucky, some people lose it overnight

which has more of an impact on them. Because mine was gradual, I was able

to get used to it over that length of time. We mentioned with bin

looking at disabled people in the workplace, disabled people as

consumers. -- been looking. What challenges are therefore disabled

people looking to get into work and employers wanting to employed or

maybe needing to change their attitudes about employment? The

whole idea of disability and getting people into work, across the world

there's over 1 billion, 1.2 billion people who live with some sort of

disability, a population the size of China a massive proportion of the

population. To get those people into work, it's going to be a win win for

everybody. Companies are going to get more of a diverse workforce.

People are going to come off benefits. There's going to be other

diverse experiences people can bring into the workforce, workplace, and

share their experience. Disabled people, day in and day out, live

with a problem they have to solve. They are innovative problem solvers.

The challenges, if there is a barrier and you can't get round

it... Those are the sort of people bosses should want in work. Right

the practical challenges of companies to employ people with a

disability. All it takes is a bit of a mindset.

If you've have some on an amazing at computers, amazing at IT but your

office is up three flights of steps and he is in a wheelchair. Rather

than not employ them, let him or her work at home. It's changing the way

you think about traditional perceptions of workplaces. Having

produced a series for us this way, what stories have you come across

that have really resonated with you? There have been brilliant stories,

and a lot of them haven't really come onto the screen or haven't been

on the radio or anything. We mentioned stuff on the inside track

we had earlier this week, the chief technology officer of the hearing

aid company. He was a brilliant story. He invented a sound bridge

which was installed in his head and has changed the lives of hundreds of

thousands of people. We had Louise Dyson, the only global casting

agency for disabled actors and actresses. Her big thing is she

wants advertisers to embrace disability. Once it up on the big

board and people are starting to see a day in and day out, it will have

some sort of profound change. Tell us about the trader you were

mentioning earlier with cerebral palsy? We had him on on some of the

World Service coverage, a former Wall Street trader who happens to

have cerebral palsy. An investment banker, made millions and millions

of dollars for a lot of the investment banks. He realised

companies weren't utilising the disabled pound, the purple pound or

purple dollar, so as he said he ran a lot of numbers. He said disability

shouldn't be seen as a niche market but an emerging market. If people

can leverage disability and somebody won't say, it's about the economy,

stupid! Fascinating. Unfortunately we have to wrap it up. Thank you for

joining us. We will see what says afterwards.

You can find more on our special coverage of this issue and how

businesses are dealing with it at bbc.com/disability

and on Twitter at hashtag - disabilityworks.

Let's go to Japan, where thousands of workers will be

It's part of a drive by the Government and business

groups to tackle overwork - and it's being called

The idea is companies make staff go home at 3pm on the last Friday

You know why they're doing it? Death from overworking in Japan is such a

problem that it even has its own word.

There you go. Sounds like a lot of fun.

Sounds horrid! Simon is back with us to take us through the papers. The

idea of premium Friday, do you do anything like this in your place of

work? No. I know of people who work in big companies in London,

especially in the summertime they do an early finish on a Friday when its

BST, when the clocks change. I seem to remember way back, certainly up

in Norway in the early 90s used to have some working hours, to take

advantage of the long summer days and get the maximum benefits out of

that. I think it was Friday, might have even been all week that people

finished at three o'clock, get out and make the most of it. I think

it's a lovely idea. There's a story in the Daily Mirror today, union

chiefs reveal workers are doing ?33.6 billion worth of unpaid

overtime year. Up to this point in 2017 people on average have been

working for free. It's interesting looking about story, they say one in

five of us are doing unpaid overtime. It is quite a remarkable

number. Again, it was interesting, there's a certain regional element

to it. It seems us folks in London do even more. Do you think doing

extra work, do you think that is adding to productivity or adding to

what is achieved at work or do you think if people worked left and took

the time of their supposed to take off there would be more productive?

I think the answer is... You always have to have appropriate worklife

balance. I think about what is changing and possibly should be

changing for the better, is it's a little more mixed. People should

head on a little earlier probably but equally you work in the evenings

or on a Saturday, it's about getting that balance right to fit in. I

think the idea you should simply be there and work all the hours and

percent is slightly daft. You've taken all the time up talking about

work and we can't talk about the Romanians on Bulgarian is working in

the UK, filling the hole of the Polish or are going back or going to

Germany. We can't even let you make a comment on it. Sorry! We

appreciate your time. We are going to go home early. That's it from us

today, bye-bye.