24/02/2017 World Business Report

Trump pledges to bring millions of factory jobs back to the US.

But who really took them - Mexicans, or machines?

Plus knock off, get outta here and go home early.

Japanese firms bring in a 3pm finish, once

Question is - can it really change a culture that has a word for death

Also coming up: Never mind the disability,

We're going to meet DJ Total Recall as part of our week long series

First, "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 to bring millions of manufacturing jobs back

According to President Trump's official website,

since it signed the North American Free Trade Agreement

with Canada and Mexico, known as Nafta, more

America has lost nearly one-third of its manufacturing jobs.

And I tell you what, official numbers do seem to back

America's Bureau of Labour Statistics says five million factory

That's left just 12.3 million Americans employed

in manufacturing, well under one in ten

Definitely a huge decline from the one in four who worked

But are bad trade deals and cheap Mexican and Chinese labour

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 because of automation.

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.

Still, President Trump told the assembled CEOs he's already

Bringing manufacturing back to America, creating high wage jobs,

was one of our campaign promises and themes and it resonated

with everybody, it was really something what happened.

States that hadn't been won in many, many years were, they came over

to our fold, a lot of it had to do with the jobs and other reasons,

but jobs, and I'm delivering on everything that we've said.

In fact, people are saying they've never have seen so much happen

Julian Howard is Head of Multi-Asset Solutions at GAM,

The awful day! Certainly on the campaign trail, where President

Trump said he would bring back jobs, we look at the American economy is

almost a title that unemployment fall. Those who want a job can get

on. That seems to be the case. The employment rate seems quite good as

a headline number, but when you look at the participation rate it isn't

that high. Many groups of people aren't as employed as they were

before the 2000 a crisis. Certain groups of white working class

males... There have been studies on them, they are playing a lot of

video games and the drug crisis. Unemployment is higher. So the US

economy seems to have low unemployment, but under the surface

many groups aren't participating in the recovery. Whether or not

President Trump is targeting those particular groups, it appears he

doesn't want to just get people back to work, he wants to put people into

factories. That's almost like back to the future! Very costly for

companies, isn't it? I think it's a romantic motion and conjures up

these 1940s posters, making America great. We saw this in a campaign

trail as well, images of big Mossley people with hammers. But

manufacturing has changed eon recognition. You alluded to the many

jobs lost in manufacturing since 2000, but a lot of that has been

replaced by more high-tech, more competitive stuff at a dozen neither

labour it used to. I that a lot lot of these corporate bosses, when we

saw the footage yesterday, they didn't seem to push back and say, we

can't do that! -- argue was -- are you surprised. It is extraordinaire.

The only real push back within has been on immigration. In terms of

these manufacturing CEOs aren't surprised there wasn't resistance to

what is essentially a Ford Concept. Who goes to a business meeting where

the number-1 agenda is about how to create jobs. It is usually about

what resources you can apply. This was an extraordinary investment

meeting about jobs and just particularly jobs. It doesn't make

sense. I've got to wrap up, briefly, wouldn't a creative President Trump

and his team be looking at creating new industries as opposed to looking

at all the manufacturing? And here is the contradiction. Elon Musk has

been hanging out at the White House and we see this contradiction. They

wanted to create this old-fashioned manufacturing industry, and yet

Donald Trump does have his eye on the future industries. Thank you for

coming in. We're also in 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 Premium Friday. The idea is companies make staff go

home at 3pm on the last Friday Death from overwork in Japan is such

a longstanding problem it even Now all week we've been bringing

you a series of reports and interviews on disability

and the workplace. We're finishing with a story

from the music business. A DJ has been telling us about his

passion for music. Take a look. I struggled a lot getting into it.

I've got the CV properly done and I applied for things and never heard

anything back. There's always some situation that happens and then I

ended up at the music. I applied for a job online. There

was a section in the application which states, have you got any

disabilities, if so please specify. I specified and they also attached a

piece of paper. I went to the interview and all of a sudden this

guy came over, put his hand on my shoulder and said, you won't be able

to do this. I was like, what? Why am I here? It was really embarrassing.

It was. How long did it take you to get over it? A good few months.

Music means everything to me. It is my life, my passion, my drive, I

sold. Everything. It's just me. -- my soul. I was very self-conscious

at one time. A jacket on, sweating, just to cover it up. Then in a

transition moment, going from that to doing this in front of 2000 kids,

which is 4000 eyes, mind blowing. You can find more on our special

coverage of this issue and how businesses are dealing

with it at bbc.com/disability. I will be back to have a look at the

papers from around the world.