13/07/2017 World Business Report

From the corporate world to the top job in politics:

A similar journey but two very different Presidents.

So on trade and climate change, can they do business?

Plus, facing up to artificial intelligence.

Critics fear it will take our jobs, but tech giant Microsoft says it

We hear their plans for the biggest invention since electricity

Strong trade figures from China are good news

but likely to stoke tensions with the US.

We start in Paris, where, as you've been hearing,

US President Donald Trump is arriving in the next

He'll be celebrating France's Bastille Day tomorrow

as President Macron's guest of honour.

Despite tensions between the two, the White House says he'll be

reaffirming the strong ties of friendship between the countries

and building on their economic partnership.

Let's take a look at what's at stake here.

The EU's trading relationship with the US is the biggest

The problem for President Trump is it's tilted in Europe's favour.

in other words it sells more goods to the US than the other

Which brings us to this: the Transatlantic Trade

Talks on the massive free trade deal between the EU and US have been

suspended since Mr Trump came to power.

The business world will be watching closely.

As it will on this - the Paris climate change accord -

Mr Macron says he will be pressing Mr Trump to sign up again,

Another source of transatlantic tension -

European pressure on the big US tech firms

But on Wednesday a French court ruled that Google is not liable

So despite the war of words - and handshakes -

could Presidents Trump and Macron - both from the corporate world -

end up having a good business relationship?

Hillary Clinton said during the campaigning in 2016 that Trump was a

big bully and needed to be treated as such. Sounds to me like someone

at that Champs-Elysee listened to that sentence of hers and advised

Emmanuel Macron to act as a bigger bully them Trump and establish his

authority in a way, and, when that's been done, he moved on to being much

more friendly, which we've seen during the G20 Summit in Hamburg,

where they exchanged jokes and invited Trump to the Bastille Day

celebration, and this strikes me as very clever, because he has

established themselves as somebody you cannot fool with. Interesting,

you know, when world leaders meet, the personality factor can have a".

How do you think they will fare, these two, with very different

approaches? They have different approaches that a similar

background. Both have a strong business orientation and they go

about fees relationships in a businesslike way, and if they can

get a good business relationship, that will lead to a good business

relationship as well. If the talks on that free trade deal, the

transatlantic trade and partnership has stalled, what hope do you think

there is of them trying to resurrect the talks on that? There's always

hope. Clearly, for good business relationships, you need to have

trade, and they have an established trade relationship, and that can

become deeper. From the point of view of Trump, who has been worried

about some of the agreements, particularly from the Asian part of

the economy, that low-cost goods are used, in the EU and the US, they are

more equally balanced. It would go against the tenor of all we've heard

from him about putting America first, this more protectionist

stance. It might seem a bit of a leap to think that he would go back

towards the free trade deal discussion. Absolutely. I don't

think it's likely development but it's still possible, and it's

something the EU would like to do, as they've just concluded another

great agreement with Japan. As far as climate change goes, we saw in

the G20 - that's where the US diverged from the other members of

the G20. Do you think there's any chance Donald Trump will sign backup

to that? I don't think it's likely that it would be fantastic if he

does. In particular, Paris is the heart of the regional climate

agreement, where it was set up, so the fact Trump is coming that way is

interesting. No doubt the decision by the French courts that Google

isn't liable for the fine in back taxes will make things a little

easier in their discussions, because that's been a point of contention,

as far as the relationship goes. Absolutely, and the fact that Trump

is coming to Paris is a good sign in all sorts of ways. Thanks so much.

We are also talking about artificial intelligence.

It has been accused of threatening everything from jobs

It's also being called the most important technology to come along

since electricity, and companies are racing to invest in research.

At an event in London, Microsoft has stated its ambitions

to be a leader in AI, and outlined a code of ethics

Here's our technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones:.

Three feet away. Take picture. What if artificial intelligence could see

your world and interpret it for you? This Microsoft engineer, who is

blind, is showing me anew at called Seeing AI, designed to help visually

impaired people. As well as reading text, it can tell him about the

people in front of him as sometimes he gets it wrong. Looking happy. I'm

getting younger by the minute! This is an application close to my heart,

but the general AI we show is applicable in so many different

ways. From around the world, Microsoft scientists came to London

to show off their AI projects. Like this live translation system for

presentations. Or software which can search through hours of

closed-circuit TV. As well as staking a claim in the leader of

this technology, the firm has come up with some ethical principles for

AI. Microsoft believes we are creating AI to amplify human

ingenuity, not to compete with it. So as such the human is the hero. I

want to end our you with superpowers. Microsoft is just one

of the tech giants battling to profit from advances in artificial

intelligence which are giving computers skills once restricted to

humans. So they are learning to see. One example, driverless cars can see

exactly where they are going. And learning to hear what we say and to

respond to it. So Amazon's Alexa or apple's sirree can respond when we

ask them to give us the news or maybe recommend a restaurant. They

are even making judgements. For instance on whether a scan shows a

malignant or other nine July. In this battle over this crucial AI

technology, Google and Facebook are each spending vast sums on research,

but China refuses to be left behind, investing heavily to build robots

that will take over from humans and its vast factories. It looks like AI

is going to transfer oil Aaron economies, transfer and our

industries, potentially make us all wealthier and happier, and the

companies who get their first will take the spoils, will take the

rewards so they have to come out loud and strong. Progress in

artificial intelligence has been more rapid in recent than even

scientists predicted and companies like Microsoft know they can't

afford to fall behind. To Asia now, and China has just

released trade figures They have come in much

better than expected - but likely to prove controversial,

particularly in the US Who can tell us more?

Well, the numbers suggest that the economy in the mainland is holding

up quite well, thanks to firmer global demand, despite the cooling

property market, despite a financial crackdown that has put companies

under pressure. If you take a look at the numbers, June exports rising

11.3% from a year ago, while imports expanded 17.2%, both beating

analysts' expectations. You mentioned the US. Those are one or

two interesting factors. The deficit with America continues to widen.

China had $25 billion trade surplus with the US in June from $22 billion

in May, China's highest level then since October 2015, and the other

significant number is China's first half trade with North Korea. It

gained 10.5% year-on-year. Donald Trump denounced the increases, which

cast doubt on whether Beijing was helping to counter the threat from

North Korea. Analysts for export growth are slow, due to rising

geopolitical risks and a stronger yuan and US dollar exchange rate.

Thank you. Let's take a look at the markets before we finish up. A mixed

picture, it's fair to say, on the Asian markets. They had surged

initially, taking their cue from Wall Street overnight, but they have

calmed a little as the trading day wore on, the Hang Seng responding

positively to that Chinese trade data that we heard about from Rico:

We will have more on that a little later. Thanks for watching.

Across the country, many teenagers are on work experience placements at

the moment. Few will have had perhaps as much fun