Global News Podcast - EU leaders warn of retaliation if Trump imposes tariffs

Episode Date: February 3, 2025

EU leaders warn of retaliation and stocks plummet in reaction to Trump's proposed tariffs. Also, Spain's former football head in court because of that kiss and a rescue mission for Chilean frogs.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. What does it take to go racing in the fastest cars in the world? Oscar Piastri. Your head's trying to get rid of one way, your body's trying to go another. Let's stroll. It's very extreme in the sense of how close you're racing wheel to wheel. We've been given unprecedented access to two of the most famous names in Formula One, McLaren and Aston Martin.

I'm Landon Aris. They build a beautiful bit of machinery that I get to then go and have fun in. They open the doors to their factories as the 2024 season reached its peak. I'm Josh Hartnett. This is F1, Back at Base. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Janet Jalil and at 14 Hours GMT on Monday the 3rd of February these are our main stories. Stock markets have plummeted amid fears of a global trade war

as Donald Trump says he'll impose new tariffs on the EU as well as Canada, Mexico and China. President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa has rejected Mr Trump's claim that his government is confiscating land. Also in this podcast, the big winner of the night at the Grammys. I just feel very full and very honoured. It's been many, many years. Beyoncé finally wins Best Album after losing out four times before. Nearly a century after the Great Depression, the US and some of its biggest trading partners seem

to be hurtling towards a new era of protectionism that could see life for many of us get more expensive. Stock markets across Asia and Europe plummeted after Donald Trump fired the first shots in a global trade war this weekend by announcing steep tariffs of 25% on Canada and Mexico and 10% on China. Mr. Trump admitted that there would maybe be some pain from what he was doing but said it would all be worth it and he told the BBC that he also planned to impose similar tariffs on the European Union. They don't take our cars, they don't take our farm products, they take almost nothing. And we take everything from them. The UK is out of line, but I'm sure that one, I think that one can be worked out.

But the European Union is, it's an atrocity what they've done. Poland's foreign minister Radek Sikorski said the EU would respond firmly to any action Mr Trump takes. The commission will do what it has always done which is to answer in kind. It's the last thing we want but a response is inevitable. The French president Emmanuel Macron echoes his words. If we are attacked in terms of trade, Europe, as a true power, will have to stand up for itself and therefore react. Now this is an action plan, but the question is how to do it.

In Canada, anger is growing that its nearest ally has carried out such punitive measures against it. At sporting events between the two countries over the weekend some Canadians booed the American national anthem. Including this performance of the star Spangled Banner during a national hockey league game against a visiting US team. Canada has already announced retaliatory tariffs of 25% on American goods ranging from beer and wine to household appliances and sporting goods. President Trump has said he will speak on Monday to the leaders of both Canada and Mexico a day before the tariffs are due to kick in.

Drew Dilkens is the mayor of Windsor, a city in the Canadian province of Ontario, just across the Detroit River. The US has to be able to feel the pain that they're causing on Canadians for no good reason. There's no justifiable reason for this. And I certainly don't believe the president has moved forward and said that he's putting these tariffs in place because of border issues, either migration or drug issues. Well guess what? We have a shared goal to relieve

those things and solve those problems together. We don't want illegal migration into Canada. We don't want to support that and we certainly want to be part of a solution with respect to fentanyl and illegal drugs. Mexico's president Claudia Sheinbaum has also ordered retaliatory tariffs in response to the US decision to slap 25% import tax on all goods coming from her country. But she's not yet given details. The former Mexican trade minister Juan Carlos Becker Pineda Monterey said the US wouldS. would also pay a heavy price in this tit-for-tat exchange. Mexico is the largest U.S. trading partner. That means that Mexico buys more than any other country in the world from the U.S. So farmers, ranchers, manufacturing companies

and others will be equally hurt if Mexico does impose a status of its own. Naturally, given the asymmetric size of the economies, the pain will be felt in Mexico, as I said, severely. But that doesn't mean that the US is not going to feel pain if Mexico retaliates. And if on top of that, you add the Canadian retaliation as well, clearly we are in a trade war.

But again, this narrative that Donald Trump has falsely nurtured in the sense that the US can withstand everything and anything, I will be very much sceptical of that. With the US markets due to open shortly as we record this podcast, our business correspondent Nick Marsh told us more about how the markets in Asia and Europe have responded. Shares are falling everywhere you look this morning. As you might imagine, markets in Europe have just opened down. Markets in Asia have been down for a while today. When they open in the US, they will tumble as well because basically investors don't like the idea of a trade war.

You know, Mexico and Canada have already retaliated. China's set to later this week. Europe, who knows what's going to happen there. You know, we could really be on the cusp of something we haven't seen when it comes to tariffs in, well, in over a century really, it goes to show how important the US is and how it sets the tone for the rest of the globe. And as you mentioned earlier, economists are predicting that these import taxes on foreign goods, well, they could push up prices for ordinary consumers, that's that pain that Donald Trump was alluding to. So if inflation does increase in the United States, then interest rates will probably also increase. And that generally causes investors around the world to have less confidence,

less easy cash to invest in the stock market. And that is all part of that general worldwide slowdown that some are fearing in the wake of these tariffs. Yes because last time we had protectionism on this scale as you say about a century ago and we saw the Great Depression so a lot at stake here and we are waiting to see what China's full response is but it's likely to be as tough as the responses that Canada and Mexico are threatening.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the only reason we haven't seen any tariffs yet from China is because they're celebrating their Lunar New Year. Markets aren't even open until Wednesday. So when China comes out of that period, then expect some sort of response. China's Commerce Ministry has already said it's strongly dissatisfied. It's firmly opposed to these new tariffs. Don't forget there's already existing tariffs from the last eight years of both Biden and Trump's administrations. And they've also filed another lawsuit with the World Trade Organization. So in many ways, China is used to this, but expect more by way of concrete response later this week.

Nick Marsh. Mr Trump has also been weighing in on South Africa following a controversial bill signed into law last month that allows the state to seize land without compensation. The US president accused South Africa of confiscating land and threatened to cut all future funding to the country, triggering a fall in its currency, the rand. The South African leader Cyril Ramaphosa denied that his government is confiscating land. But speaking to reporters, President Trump decried what he called the South African government's terrible treatment of certain classes of people. Terrible things are happening in South Africa. The leadership is doing some terrible things.

Horrible things. So that's under investigation right now. We're making determination. And until such time as we find out what South Africa is doing, they're taking away land, they're confiscating land, and actually they're doing things that are perhaps far worse than that. Our correspondent in Johannesburg, Miley Jones, told us more about why Mr Trump was making this threat now. He made this threat following a new bill that was signed into law by the president last month that basically has been quite controversial with some of his coalition partners because it talks about giving the government in certain

circumstances the powers to seize land without compensation. So there have been concerns in South Africa about what this might mean for ownership laws. But this is something that the governing party, the ANC, has always denied. It says that it would only be done in extreme circumstances if, for instance, the government had been trying to, you know, negotiate with a landowner and had failed to do so, had basically gone through every other measure and not been able to come to an agreement, only then would they seize the land. And Mr Trump's powerful adviser, Elon Musk, is South African himself. He's also been critical of this bill, calling it racist. Absolutely. It's an issue that he actually discussed before he kind of came, became part of the Trump administration. So during the last South African elections last year, he's always been against what he sees as racialized policies around land reform and land ownership in South Africa. So this isn't the first time he's kind of commented on this. And what do black South Africans make of this given that three decades on from the end of apartheid the majority of land remains in the hands of the white minority?

Yeah, land reform is a very controversial and sticky conversation here in South Africa. Lots of black South Africans have been frustrated at the pace of land reform, saying that it's been going too slow, that it's unfair, that still the majority of land reform, saying that it's been going too slow, that it's unfair, that still the majority of farmland in South Africa is in the hands of the white minority. So they've been pushing for reform, but the South African government is aware of its coalition partners, of the message that this may send to potential investors. So they've been very cautious in their approach, trying to implement some change, but also fearing that they might scare investors off and try

to strike a balance between the two. Mayoni Jones and another development involving Donald Trump. He and Elon Musk have torn into the embattled US Agency for International Development, with Mr. Musk declaring, US aid is a criminal organisation, time for it to die. Mr Trump saying, it's been run by a bunch of radical lunatics and we're getting them out.

His administration has already frozen most of the work done by the agency, the world's biggest humanitarian aid donor. The British Prime Minister Kirstama is taking part in a meeting of European Union leaders in Brussels today, the first time a UK leader has done so since Brexit. It's part of what he calls a reset between Britain and the European Union. He's also meeting NATO Secretary General Mark Ritter and the talks are expected to focus on defence and security cooperation with Ukraine at the top of the agenda. Our UK political correspondent Rob

Watson told us more about the significance of this trip. I think it's an important symbolic moment and it really does if you like solidify that idea of a transition from 14 years of Conservative government and certainly since 2016 a very pro-Brexit, if you like, anti-EU Conservative government to a Labour government that was full of people like Sakir Starmer who were never in favour of leaving the European Union. So he's very much in favour of what they call a reset in relations. I don't think we should get too carried away. I think it does mean a much warmer tone. We've seen that already. But Britain will still have a distant relationship with the European Union, a hard Brexit as it's known, Jeanette,

because it's not planning to join the EU's two main economic institutions, the single market and the customs union. And as for the NATO side of it, it's Britain saying, come on, whatever's's happened in Washington we must continue to stick by Ukraine. And what about the EU leaders? How are they expected to respond to Keir Starmer? Because one of the British newspapers is talking today about how the French president is going to tell the British leader that Brexit has failed. Yes I've seen that report and certainly I've heard that from European diplomats. I don't think it's any secret actually, Jeanette, that most European Union leaders both before and after they thought before Brexit it was a bad idea and since Brexit nothing that's

happened has changed their view that Britain has made a terrible mistake. But I mean, I think certainly it's clear that European leaders, whatever they think about Britain's decision to leave, do want a better relationship. But what they will say is that that relationship is very much defined, its limits are defined by Britain and its red lines on the customs union, the single market. In other words, Brussels is saying, yeah, we're really happy that you want to be best friends with us again. But you know, there's a limit to what we can do, you know, if you don't want to become a member of the European Union again. Rob Watson.

Music's biggest event of the year, the Grammy Awards, has been held in Los Angeles, even as the city is still recovering from last month's devastating wildfires. Beyoncé made history as the first black woman to win best country album for Cowboy Carter and she finally won album of the year after losing out four times at previous ceremonies. Other winners included the Beatles, Charlie XCX and Chappell Rowan whose explosive rise to fame secured her the Grammy for best new artist. I told myself if I ever won a Grammy and I got to stand up here in front of the most powerful people in music, I would demand that labels and the industry profiting millions of dollars off of artists would offer a livable wage in health care, especially to developing artists.

The event is also supporting relief efforts for those affected by the fires. KJ Matthews is a journalist in LA who's been volunteering with the wildfire efforts and has also been watching the Grammys. I spoke to some people who were putting on the Grammys, the organizers, and what they told me was that they actually had spoken with the mayor of Los Angeles, the governor of California and also firefighters. And they really just wanted to kind of get a feeling for should we go forward with the Grammys? And I'm told that they felt that people really needed

to hear this, you know, they really wanted to celebrate and to get their minds off of all the misery that's been happening in Los Angeles for the last couple of weeks. And I think the show really struck the balance well. They had a QR code running across the screen allowing people at home to donate funds. They had the firefighters coming on stage and also walking the red carpet. They had wonderful video segments of business owners and residents that have

lost their homes and their buildings talking talking about what it's going to take to rebuild and how hurt they were to lose everything. So I really think they struck a great balance. They brought in more than $7 million in a three and a half hour time period. So I think they did well. And also, a lot of people got political. Lady Gaga used her acceptance speech to call out

what she felt was an attack against trans people saying, you know, trans people need love. They're not invisible. Shakira used her acceptance speech to say she wanted to donate her award to the immigrants in the U.S. And also Alicia Keys received the global impact award and she used her acceptance speech to basically say DI is not a threat, it's a gift. So a lot of people got political. It'll be very, very interesting to see how conservatives react to that on Monday morning here in the US. Journalist KJ Matthews. Still to come in this podcast, the frogs rescued from extinction in Chile who've given birth in an unusual way at London

Zoo. The males brewed the tadpoles in their vocal sacs until their complete development and then they spit out tiny little froglets about 50 days later. What does it take to go racing in the fastest cars in the world? Oscar Piastri. Your head's trying to get rid of one way, your body's trying to go another. Lance Stroll. It's very extreme in the sense of how close we're racing wheel to wheel. We've been given unprecedented access to two of the most famous names in Formula One, McLaren and Aston Martin. I'm Landon Aris. They build a beautiful bit of machinery that I get to then

go and have fun in. They open the doors to their factories as the 2024 season reached its peak. I'm Josh Hartnett. This is F1, Back at Base. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. The World Cup winner, Yeni Hormoso, has confronted Spain's former Football Federation boss Luis Rubiales in court, saying she did not consent to an infamous kiss that overshadowed the celebrations of Spain's victory at the Women's World Cup final in 2023. She told the jury she felt disrespected as a woman. Mr Rubiales denies the charges of sexual assault and coercion. The trial, which began today, could see him jailed for up to two and a half years if he's found guilty.

Armadrid correspondent Guy Hedgeco is following the case. The first witness to appear is Yenny Ermosso herself, the player who received that kiss from Luis Rubiales after the World Cup final and she has been talking in some detail about the kiss itself, the moment it happened, how she felt it was without consent, it was unwanted, and she also said that it should have been one of the happiest days of her life, having won the World Cup, and she said that that was tarnished by this unwanted kiss from the Federation president. And she also talked about pressures that she said she was put under from members of the Federation and people close to Luis Rubiales in the days

afterwards as they tried to pressure her, as she put it, to try and change her story and say that the kiss had been consensual. He denies any wrongdoing? Yes Luis Rubiales says that he did nothing wrong because he gained the consent of Yenny Edmoso before he kissed her so we are expecting him to plead not guilty on that count. And what are we expecting throughout the course of this trial because it won't just be Yenny Edmoso we'll hear from we're going to hear from other members of the World Cup squad and other members of the team in managing them.

In the first half of the trial more or less, it's going to be a witness account, so we'll be hearing a lot from teammates of Yeni Edmoso, whether they're in Spain or abroad, some of them are going to be giving their testimony via video link because they are abroad, that's where they play. There will be other members of the coaching staff, members of the Football Federation, former members of the Football Federation and then it won't be until February the 12th that we actually hear from Luis Rubiales himself. So the defendants, he and three other defendants who are also accused of coercion, of helping him try to pressure Danielle de Molson, they will be facing questions from February the 12th onwards.

This whole case has thrown the spotlight not just on sexism in sport but sexism in wider Spanish society. Yenny and Mosso in her testimony today says that when she was kissed by Luis Rubiales, she said she was being kissed by her boss. And I think that aspect of all of this has triggered a lot of debate. It certainly did when this controversy first blew up in the summer of 2023. The idea that this was a man in a position of power kissing someone who was junior to him, if you like, but in the same institution. So there was a lot of discussion about whether that was

a broader problem in Spanish society, not just in football, not just in other sports even, but in the workplace for example, or other areas of life. So there's been a lot of debate about that. Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said that the Rubiales case reflected broader problems in Spanish society of gender equality and sexual consent. Guy Hedgeco in Madrid. Now to basketball and what's been described as one of the biggest and most shocking transfers in sporting history. The Los Angeles Lakers

have confirmed that the 25 year old superstar Luka Doncic has joined them from the Dallas Mavericks in return for the Olympic gold medalist and much older NBA champion Anthony Davis who heads to Dallas. It's cool to everyone by surprise including the Athletics senior basketball correspondent Joe Varden. There was no inclination in the NBA that something like this was going to happen with Luka Donchich. Fans are taking this really seriously and they are stunned. They're protesting. You've seen some social media footage

of protesters out in front of American Airlines Center. They're carrying around a fake coffin. This is arguably the most stunning trade in NBA history. A player of Luka's caliber and age, five-time All-Star at the age of 25, who did not ask to be traded. No player like that has ever been traded before. And to go where he's going to the Lakers, where he can be the next face of that franchise, while LeBron James is still there at a time when to get Luca they had to trade out LeBron's

best friend on the team. It is a true shocker not just in the NBA but in professional sports in general. That was the Athletics senior basketball correspondent Joe Varden. The British husband of a Thai woman whose body was found over 20 years ago in a mountain stream in northern England has been arrested. Countryside walkers discovered Lam Duan Armitage's body in the Yorkshire Dales in 2004. She remained unidentified for 15 years until her family saw a BBC news report and came forward.

David Armitage, who has been living in Thailand since her death, was arrested on suspicion of murder when he returned to the UK after the Thai authorities revoked his residence visa. Well, the BBC Thai services Isaria Praifong Yam took part in the investigation that led to the identification of the victim. She spoke to Rob Young. It was a BBC story that led to her identification because when her body was found on the hills in 2004, nobody reported her missing until the police started the cold case review in 2016. And only three years later, her cousin who also lives in the UK saw a BBC story about it. So she contacted

the police as she believed that the body could be Lam Duan, who lost touch with the family since 2004. Then the police carried out a DNA test to confirm it was Lam Duan. I actually met her cousin. We went together, we walked up to the hills where Lam Duan's body was found.

And we went to the churchyard where her body was buried. She was called Lady of the Hills because no one knew who she was. Lam Duan's children also didn't know where their mother was. They thought that she went back to live in Thailand as they were told. So I went to Thailand also to talk to Lam Duan's mother

who didn't know for years what happened to her daughter. She told me the only thing she wants now is to have Lam Duan's remains sent back so her daughter can finally be home. And tell us more about the man who's been arrested. Yeah, first of all, David Armitage, who was arrested on Sunday by the UK police, he is only a suspect at the moment. He isn't charged yet. He was detained from his house in Kanchanaburi, west of Thailand, the country that he had been living since her death. He had a residence visa in Thailand, but the Thai authorities revoked it and he

didn't file an immigration petition which means that he no longer has the right to stay in Thailand. So he returned to the UK on Saturday morning and was arrested by police after his arrival at Heathrow Airport. And has Mr Armitage O's legal team commented? I'm not aware of his legal team and himself only told the Sun newspaper in March in 2020 that he wasn't involved in his wife's death. That was Isaria Prathong Yam. Now some good news about frogs that were discovered nearly 200 years ago by the naturalist Charles Darwin.

years ago by the naturalist Charles Darwin. This sounds like birds but actually it's a call made by these unusual tiny frogs. The Darwin's frogs, native to Chile, are endangered because of a deadly fungus. But now, after an epic rescue mission that saw a group of them transported halfway across the world to London Zoo, more than 30 froglets have been born there to male parents. Ben Tapley is curator of amphibians and reptiles at the Zoological Society of London. He told Nick Robinson more about them. They're a really, really unique and cool frog. They're about two and a half centimetres long and really, really well camouflaged. They look like tiny little leaves and what's really unique about

them is the males brewed the tadpoles in their vocal sacs until their complete development and then they spit out tiny little froglets about 50 days later. So when that happened at London Zoo that must be rather exciting. Yeah, it's one of the most incredible achievements since I've been working there at least. They're tiny when they're kind of spat out, they're about the size of a grain of rice and seeing them in the enclosure on the first time it happened was really special. And for that to happen, there had to be a mission, did they, to the forest in Chile in order to get the frogs back and prepare to breed them?

That's correct. It was a really urgent mission because the populations of frogs in the park that was infected by the disease had declined by 90% in less than a year. So a collaborative team travelled out to Chile and spent about a week trying to find the last frogs and they made a 17,000 kilometre journey to London in October last year. Daff question potentially, but why does that journey need to be made? Why isn't it possible to breed Chilean tree frogs in Chile? It was all about the timing really, the urgency, the numbers of frogs crashed in the wild and there just wasn't capacity in Chile to do that at the time. But at a later date,

further populations will be established in zoos in Chile. That's one of the main goals of the project. But are you saying that the Zoological Society of London has expertise that simply doesn't exist nearer to its natural habitat? At the moment, yes. We've been kind of responding to things like this for decades. Mountain chicken frogs are a really good example where conservationists need to step in urgently to prevent populations from disappearing off the face of the planet. And when they get a little bit bigger than a grain of rice, we can come and see them at the zoo, can we? Yeah, we have a facility that our visitors can come view in and see all of the habitats

and hopefully the tiny little frogs hopping around but they're really small so you need to keep your eyes peeled. Frog expert Ben Tapley and if you can't make it to London Zoo to see the frogs there you can see images of them on the BBC News website including video of the moment one is born being spat out of the mouth of its father. And that's all from us for now, but there will be a new edition of the Global News podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast, you can send us an email. The address is globalpodcast.bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X at Global News Pod. This edition was

mixed by Chris Kazares, the producer was Rachel Wright, the editor is Karen Martin. I'm Jhanot Jaleel. Until next time, goodbye. What does it take to go racing in the fastest cars in the world? Oscar Piaz Street. Your head's trying to get rid of one way, your body's trying to go another. Lance Stroll. It's very extreme in the sense of how close you're racing wheel to wheel. We've been given unprecedented access to two of the most famous names in Formula One, McLaren and Aston Martin. I'm Landon Aris. They build a beautiful bit of machinery that I get to then go and have fun in. They open the doors to their factories as the 2024 season reached its peak.

I'm Josh Hartnett. This is F1, Back at Base. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.