:00:00. > :00:12.Labour has pledged not to raise income tax for anyone earning less
:00:13. > :00:28.the euro rises on Emmanuel Macron's victory. What does it mean for
:00:29. > :00:31.global business and trade? And we look at why pharmaceutical companies
:00:32. > :00:39.are resisting Donald Trump's plans to cut red tape.
:00:40. > :00:47.Welcome to Asia Business Report. France has elected a new president,
:00:48. > :00:53.Emmanuel Macron, and the euro has risen during the trading day in Asia
:00:54. > :00:59.as the markets breed a sigh of relief. The euro factor against the
:01:00. > :01:03.yen hit a one-year high since falling back slightly, and this is
:01:04. > :01:06.how the other currencies are trading at the moment. If we look at the
:01:07. > :01:16.other financial markets that have just opened,, the Nikkei has jumped
:01:17. > :01:20.almost 1%, the All Ordinaries as well, and the Hang Seng due to open
:01:21. > :01:26.just a little later. Of course Mr Macron is seen as business friendly.
:01:27. > :01:35.He defeated the far right's Marine Le Pen, who vowed to take France out
:01:36. > :01:39.of the European Union. He won 66% of the popular vote according to the
:01:40. > :01:43.Interior Ministry and it was an election that divided the country,
:01:44. > :01:48.but he says he's ready to deal with difficulties facing France.
:01:49. > :01:54.TRANSLATION: And for the next five years my responsibility is going to
:01:55. > :01:59.be to calm fears and to make us believe in optimism again, and to
:02:00. > :02:04.recover the conquest spirit, which is the best definition of the French
:02:05. > :02:08.spirit. My responsibility will be to gather together all the men and
:02:09. > :02:17.women who are willing to face the challenges that we have to expect.
:02:18. > :02:23.What will his win mean for business? My guests specialises in
:02:24. > :02:28.geopolitics. We've been talking a lot about his domestic agenda, and
:02:29. > :02:32.he talked about it during campaigning, but how is he going to
:02:33. > :02:36.be for the rest of the world? Of course we are all watching. We seen
:02:37. > :02:43.those markets picking up. Will he fulfil his promises? Thank you. In
:02:44. > :02:49.fact during his campaign he fought very much on domestic economic
:02:50. > :02:53.policy. The foreign one, I can see two circles. The first will be the
:02:54. > :02:58.European Union and the second theme will be outside the European Union.
:02:59. > :03:03.He positioned himself as a champion of European Union co-ordination and
:03:04. > :03:08.cooperation, so secondly they want to scale back from the existing
:03:09. > :03:12.rules and agreements that they have, and maybe they will go even further
:03:13. > :03:17.now that the United Kingdom is getting out of Brexit. Maybe they
:03:18. > :03:19.will believe that one of the obstacles concerning the future
:03:20. > :03:24.cooperation and integration of the European Union is also going down,
:03:25. > :03:30.and during his campaign he was also quite hard concerning Brexit. He
:03:31. > :03:35.said it won't be easy and he won't make it easy! But for the rest of
:03:36. > :03:44.Europe it is very good news because they will continue with the existing
:03:45. > :03:47.agenda. He didn't go very much outside. He went to the United
:03:48. > :03:51.States but now the relationship with President Trump won't be the best
:03:52. > :03:57.one. As we know, President Trump to some extent wanted to help Marine Le
:03:58. > :04:03.Pen to win, while for Asia, since China is positioning itself as the
:04:04. > :04:09.champion of globalism, we just have too referred to Xi Jinping going to
:04:10. > :04:13.Dallas - probably hear there will be much more options concerning
:04:14. > :04:17.cooperation. Let me ask you one question. Obviously Asia is looking
:04:18. > :04:22.at this more positively, but how is he looking at Asia? Will he visit? I
:04:23. > :04:29.think he will, because after Europe it will be the first, I would say,
:04:30. > :04:33.reason to visit because of the amounts of money that we are talking
:04:34. > :04:37.about, and also the cooperation. On the other side of the Atlantic,
:04:38. > :04:43.since President Trump is not positioning himself as a
:04:44. > :04:47.globalisation champion, I don't see many other opportunities, so this is
:04:48. > :04:52.why maybe by default he will come to Asia rather than somewhere else. We
:04:53. > :04:58.will leave it there. Thanks for joining us.
:04:59. > :05:03.Let's take a look at some of the news will be keeping an eye on this
:05:04. > :05:06.week. Tomorrow, Tuesday, it's the turn of the South Koreans to cast
:05:07. > :05:16.their vote for a new president. The election comes just a month ousted
:05:17. > :05:21.president was arrested on corruption charges. Snap will release its first
:05:22. > :05:24.earnings report in New York, and Toyota later will release full-year
:05:25. > :05:29.results. The strength of the yen has been a drag on the carmaker's
:05:30. > :05:33.earnings, and we'll also keep an eye on oil prices after a big slide at
:05:34. > :05:39.the end of last week, though oil prices did see an uptick on Friday.
:05:40. > :05:43.Earlier I spoke to Simon Littlewood from ACG. He started by explaining
:05:44. > :05:47.what he is expecting from South Korea's collection. A lot has been
:05:48. > :05:53.said about the need for transparency, and of course the
:05:54. > :05:58.previous president, poor thing. Timmy, it's clear the South Korean
:05:59. > :06:00.economy depends massively on the relationship between these
:06:01. > :06:06.vertically integrated combines and the government, and political
:06:07. > :06:10.corruption is a reality, so I don't see any change in the nature of the
:06:11. > :06:17.establishment or the politics. The big thing, the big story in Korea is
:06:18. > :06:20.because of demographics you now have a majority of the population born
:06:21. > :06:25.after the Korean War, so they don't share the same attitudes towards the
:06:26. > :06:30.North. I've got to push onto those other things on the agenda. Toyota
:06:31. > :06:33.is the other one of course, the world 's largest carmaker reporting
:06:34. > :06:38.earnings on Thursday, and of course we know it's a very intense kind of
:06:39. > :06:43.market we are seeing, particularly in the US, and Trump insisting these
:06:44. > :06:47.carmakers start producing in the US. It's interesting. I remember being
:06:48. > :06:51.on this so when Toyota became the largest carmaker about a decade ago.
:06:52. > :06:55.They are facing two major challenges in the US. Globally the yen has
:06:56. > :07:00.climbed significantly over the last couple of years. That's hurting
:07:01. > :07:04.their earnings. Secondly, Trump used a lot of rhetoric during the
:07:05. > :07:08.campaign about how he would punish companies that imported lots of
:07:09. > :07:12.Robert and didn't employ workers. The difficulty is that he has walked
:07:13. > :07:17.back on a lot of this rhetoric. Our reading of this is that there will
:07:18. > :07:24.be some kind of tokenism, some kind of deal done. Got to snap in there
:07:25. > :07:28.with Snap coming in with its earnings for the first time. I had
:07:29. > :07:33.to have my daughter explained what Snapchat was, and it didn't film you
:07:34. > :07:37.with joy. It's one of these highly frothy text docks where the results
:07:38. > :07:40.will be disappointing. They are struggling to monetise the product.
:07:41. > :07:48.But the reality is that the price-earnings ratio there is very
:07:49. > :07:52.little reference to earnings. Simon Littlewood. The Trump
:07:53. > :07:56.Administration's response to slow but steady growth in the United
:07:57. > :08:00.States has been to declare that cutting red tape would boost company
:08:01. > :08:04.profits and economic activity. The president has issued orders and
:08:05. > :08:08.initiatives for a range of industries, and one of them is the
:08:09. > :08:12.pharmaceutical sector. The president has said cutting regulations would
:08:13. > :08:20.make it easier for drug companies to get new medicines to the market, but
:08:21. > :08:24.how realistic is that proposal? With the executives of big
:08:25. > :08:27.pharmaceutical by his side, President Trump said low hearing the
:08:28. > :08:32.cost of prescription drugs had to be done. How? Cutting regulations. We
:08:33. > :08:37.are going to be streamlining the process so that when you have a drug
:08:38. > :08:43.you can get it approved instead of waiting for many, many years. In
:08:44. > :08:47.that meeting in the White House was the influential pharmaceutical lobby
:08:48. > :08:53.group. We are living with regulations that were developed 40
:08:54. > :08:57.years ago. We have to keep safety first but there are opportunities to
:08:58. > :09:02.modernise the system to be able to give medicines to the marketplace
:09:03. > :09:05.faster and help patients. Faster approval by the Federal drug
:09:06. > :09:09.Administration or FDA would mean more drugs on the market, which
:09:10. > :09:17.should increase competition and bring down prices. But the cost of
:09:18. > :09:22.that idea could be even greater. In patient safety. This is a small drug
:09:23. > :09:25.company that tests new cancer treatments. These are the companies
:09:26. > :09:29.that take most of the risk when getting a drug to market, a process
:09:30. > :09:37.that can cost billions of dollars, take ten to 15 years, and no
:09:38. > :09:42.guarantee of success. But perhaps surprisingly, they are not convinced
:09:43. > :09:48.faster approval Zara good idea. What's important is to develop
:09:49. > :09:54.effective therapies that are also safe. I don't believe we should
:09:55. > :09:58.lower the bar. The President's views on the pharmaceutical industry, like
:09:59. > :10:02.his views on others, is that there are simple business solutions to its
:10:03. > :10:07.problems. However, the testimony from the industry itself
:10:08. > :10:15.demonstrates that Donald Trump was Mac solutions don't always have much
:10:16. > :10:20.to do with the underlying problem. Let's take a look at those markets.
:10:21. > :10:28.I was telling you about them at the start of the programme, but they
:10:29. > :10:34.continue to rise, the Nikkei really on the rise, the highest since
:10:35. > :10:38.September 20 15. That's it for this issue of Asia Business Report.
:10:39. > :10:49.The pro-European centrist, Emmanuel Macron, who's just
:10:50. > :10:53.39, was voted in with a projected 66%