Global News Podcast - Trump: The first 100 days

Episode Date: April 29, 2025

Donald Trump is celebrating 100 days in office - a key landmark. But the newly-elected Canadian government is reacting sharply against him. And Australian voters have taken against Mr Trump too.

You're listening to the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. Hello, I'm Oliver Conway. This edition is published in the early hours of Wednesday 30th April. President Trump marks his 100th day in office with another concession on tariffs. After winning the election in Canada, Mark Carney says he'll meet his US counterpart soon. And what caused the huge power cut in Spain and Portugal? Also in the podcast. There's no doubt that right wing centre right parties that have tried to emulate or channel

Donald Trump are being beaten in the polls. Is Donald Trump making life hard for right wing politicians elsewhere. Donald Trump has been marking 100 days since he was sworn in as the 47th president of the United States. And in case you missed any of it, here's a reminder of the story so far. From this moment on, America's decline is over. I'm about to sign some very important executive orders. Military personnel to assist Border Patrol.

30,000 beds in Guantanamo to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens. The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip. We'll own it. Air Force One is currently flying over the recently renamed Gulf of America. If all of the hostages aren't returned, let hell break out. The Department of Government Efficiency moves to revamp and shrink the size of the federal government. People voted for major government reform and that's what people are going to get. A dictator without elections, Zelensky better move fast. Should I run again, you tell me.

You should be thanking the president for trying to bring it into this conflict. You're not in a good position. You don't have the cards right now. Tariffs, you know, they're all set. They go into effect tomorrow. Hopefully we can get a ceasefire from Russia. There were nearly 200 who were sent to El Salvador. Department of Education, we're going to eliminate it. Details of the US attack plans were first shared two days earlier with Jeffrey Goldberg. I don't know anything about it. We have to have Greenland. This is Liberation Day. The United States will implement reciprocal tariffs.

We've been meeting with China. We're putting a lot of pressure on Russia. You have to have Ukraine want to make a deal too. America is back. While Mr Trump has been celebrating the milestone of his second term with a speech in Warren in the swing state of Michigan one of seven he won to secure victory. I'm thrilled to be back in this beautiful state with thousands of proud hard-working American patriots and we're here tonight in the heartland of our nation to celebrate the most successful

first 100 days of any administration in the history of our country. And that's according to many, many people. This is the best, they say, 100-day start of any president in history. And everyone is saying it. We're just — we've just gotten started. You haven't even seen anything yet it's all just kicking in and week by week we're ending illegal immigration we're taking back our jobs are protecting our great American auto workers and all of our workers frankly. We're protecting all of our workers. We're restoring the rule of law. However, not everything has been going Mr Trump's way. The

markets have forced him to backtrack on tariffs, including new concessions on cars announced on Tuesday, while China has been refusing his calls to negotiate on trade. And many Americans have told pollsters he is failing on the economy. Just ahead of his big speech on North America, editor Sarah Smith sent us this report. Donald Trump is coming to celebrate his 100 days, during which he has barely wasted a minute taking

a chainsaw to government spending, deporting migrants to a notorious mega prison, and taking revenge on those he sees as his enemies. And he's done it all more like an emperor than an elected president, governing by fiat and ignoring anyone who tries to stop him. But his poll ratings are dismal. He was elected to fix the economy and voters are worried that his trade tariffs are only going to make it worse.

He seems excitable today, heading off to celebrate 100 days. But Donald Trump first had to adjust his trade tariffs again, making it less expensive to import car parts, while still insisting tariffs are one of his greatest achievements. The economy would be certainly right up there. And I think it's doing great. We were losing billions and billions of dollars a day with trade, and now I have that down

to a very low level and soon we're going to be making a lot of money. Persistent high prices are one of the reasons why Donald Trump's approval rating at this point in his term is lower than any president for over 80 years. And he has warned voters that because of his trade tariffs, the economy may get worse before it gets better. This Michigan diner has a surcharge on egg dishes because eggs still cost so much. All these tariffs may put prices way up. They may, you know, but I think in the long run, I think it's going to be beneficial.

Do you think people believe it's worth some short-term economic pain to get results in the end? I think so, you know. I can't put any words to the last four years. Did you have different hopes for Donald Trump running the economy? I did. I was hoping that some things would take... He would approach things a little bit differently, seeing that he's a little seasoned coming into a second term, but I was hoping, but we're just treading water

and seeing that things get better from here. You're gambling with the lives of millions of people. You're gambling with World War Three. You're gambling with World War Three. During the last 100 days, the aggressive bullying of President Zelensky was both shocking and typical of how Donald Trump has been conducting himself, demanding other countries do exactly as he wants. They charge us, we charge them, we charge them less.

So how can anybody be upset? His global tariffs have caused chaos and confusion, with Americans worried they'll bring inflation and recession to the US. He's making law with the stroke of his pen, signing a record number of executive orders, bypassing Congress, ignoring court rulings and seizing more and more presidential power. Tonight is the first rally for Trump supporters since he returned to the White House, but he may have even bigger ambitions. I'd like to be Pope. That would be my number one choice.

A report by our North America editor Sarah Smith. While the US president has tried to intimidate many foreign countries, those efforts appear to have backfired in Canada, damaging the leader of the right-leaning opposition. Mr Trump himself said he had cost Pierre Polievre, described as a mini-Trump, his 25-point lead. He is now projected to have lost his own seat after Monday's votes while the Liberal Party's new leader Mark Carney came from more or less nowhere to win. The campaign was dominated by Mr. Trump's tariffs and

annexation threats and in his victory speech Mr. Carney again waved them away. America wants our land, our resources, our water, our country. Never. But these are not idle threats. President Trump is trying to break us so that America can own us. That will never, that will never ever happen. Mr Carney will though have to govern without a majority in parliament, with his liberals expected to fall three seats short. He has been speaking to our economics editor, Faisal Islam in Ottawa. The global significance of Mark Carney's election victory is that he now sits at the centre

of a potential alternative pole of global economic thinking in a world of Trump tariffs. Mr Carney has not immediately sued for peace with President Trump after his triumph and he told me he wanted to continue with a tough approach that led to his party retaining power against the odds. He said he wasn't in a rush to go to the White House or Mar-a-Lago. We are the biggest client for more than 40 states. We supply them with vital energy and it potentially could supply them with critical minerals. Remember that we supply their farmers with basically all their fertilizers, 70% of their fertilizer and beyond. So we deserve respect, we expect respect and I'm

sure we'll get it in due course again. We'll have a partnership on our terms. There's a win-win possibility there but on our terms, not on their terms. Underpinning this approach is Mr. Carney's absolute conviction that the US is making a mistake that will primarily and visibly backfire on its companies and its consumers. He believes President Trump's gun is pointing primarily at his own feet. There is, however, significant potential economic damage about to be wrought by these tariffs on the Canadian economy.

Three-quarters of Canada's exports go to the US. Mr. Carney said his country and the world should accept that the US had changed and make significant transformations to diversify by trading more with other countries. We've got lots of other things to do. We can build out our economy here at home. We are in the process of building our relationships more deeply in Europe, elsewhere around the world. Mark Carney said on the campaign trail that it was a tragedy that America had given up

its leadership of the global economy. He's suggesting that with the help of the rest of the G7, Canada will step up. And by an incredible quirk of fate, it is he who will host the G7 summit in Alberta in June, just days before some of President Trump's tariffs are due to come into force. Faisal Islam in Ottawa. Well, Canada isn't the only country where Donald Trump's actions have had an impact on voters. Australia goes to the polls on Saturday, and the centre-right opposition leader Peter Dutton has been losing ground to the centre-left Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Sarah Montague has been speaking to the former Australian

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who is from Mr Dutton's Liberal Party but is a critic of him. There's no doubt that right-wing centre-right parties or right-wing parties that have tried to emulate or channel or imitate Donald Trump are being beaten in the polls. Dutton has done some Trumpy things and said some Trumpy things. But Donald Trump has not threatened to make Australia the 52nd state of the United States. So he hasn't threatened or bullied Australia in the way that he has Canada. So it isn't as visceral a reaction as it was in Canada. But definitely Trump is not helping

Dutton. And the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese's Labour Party, is the favourite to win this weekend. That's true. We have preferential voting. I would think at least a third of Australians will vote for somebody else. Right, but do you think they're in such a strong position because Peter Dutton has, to use your phrase, said some Trumpy things? Yeah, well look, he has said Trumpy things. I mean, just a day or so ago he lashed out

at the ABC, Australia's equivalent of the BBC, and The Guardian, which has a big presence in Australia, calling them the hate media. Now, it's one thing for the conservative side of politics to call the ABC latte-sipping mung bean eating inner-city lefties, but to call them hate media is ludicrous. I mean, that's a Trumpian thing to say. So in terms of how politicians should deal with President Trump, you have said if you suck up to bullies, whether it's global affairs or in the playground, you just get more bullying. You certainly shouldn't be being rude or abusive or indeed using the sort of language Trump does.

But believe me, from my own experience with Trump, the only way to win his respect is to stand up to him. Now, as circumstances were during my time as Prime Minister, I had a blazing row with him at the beginning of the relationship. I certainly stood my ground. Actually, he backed down, which was good. That one is respect. Why?

Because the way bullies operate is that if they can get away with bullying someone, they'll keep bullying them. But if somebody stands up to them, they then have to take a different approach, negotiate, come to an accommodation. So Mark Carney, who is absolutely the leader for the times Canada needs, has done exactly the right thing in standing up to Trump. Even the people that didn't vote for the Liberal Party are totally supporting him. So the United States now faces a situation where this trade war and the bullying has caused a rise of nationalism and made Canadians angry, which is not easy to do. You look across the Pacific to China, a big trade war he's launched against China has

caused a huge rise of nationalism there. I think it's very unlikely that Xi Jinping will come and want to negotiate a deal with Trump. I mean, just think of the mentality of the way Trump has approached this era. He imposes these huge tariffs, including on China, which he hasn't suspended. And then he gives a speech in which he says, all these countries are coming to Washington to do a deal, coming here to kiss my ass. Those are the words he used. So what does he expect?

He wants Xi Jinping to go to Washington and kiss his ass. It's calculated to create, well, no solution. Former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. And still to come on the Global News Podcast, new hope for warm countries as a vaccine is trialled that doesn't need to be kept in the fridge. The European Union says it will carry out a thorough investigation of the huge blackout in Spain and Portugal to make sure lessons can be learnt. Reports suggest the problem started with two incidents of power generation loss in southwest Spain. At the time about 70% of the nation's electricity was reportedly being supplied by renewables. One expert said it was the first big blackout of the green electricity era but it's not

clear if solar energy was to blame. More details from our environment correspondent Georgina Ranard. We know that the Spanish grid, Red Electrica, said they think there were two disconnection events in the southwest of Spain before the outage. That includes Estremadora region, where there's a very powerful nuclear plant, solar farms and a hydroelectric plant. But later the Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said the outage was not due to excessive energy generated from renewals. There's also suggestion from the grid that the disconnection in the southwest caused a power trip to the interconnectors between France and Spain, which is very vulnerable. There are some other possible

theories that it could just be a mechanical error, a software error somewhere in the system. You have to understand that power grids are really delicate. They manage power 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and they can be quite vulnerable to small failures. They're meant to be able to adapt to one failure, they can absorb that. But if there are multiple failures in a short period of time, it can have this snowball effect. We've seen that in other parts of the world. And actually one expert I spoke to said that there is an outage of this scale on average once a year somewhere in the world. What are the problems with having solar and wind power in this kind of situation? Renewables do tend to operate a bit differently to traditional sources like fossil

fuels. There are challenges around storage. Historically fossil fuel plants had a lot of capacity for storage and they could be quite flexible to fluctuations in supply and demand. That is a bit hard with renewables which is why there is so much more investment now in long-term storage like batteries and as I was saying they're vulnerable to these fluctuations in supply and demand so if there's a mismatch and that risks the frequency of the grid power operators can actually switch off plants to stop damage. But if many do that in short succession, it can have this snowball effect. We've known about this for a long time and the Spanish grid should have a lot of forecasting of supply and demand and also is meant to be quite resilient to these things. And I think that will become one of the questions that is being asked in

these investigations. But could this ultimately lead to a change in the way we develop green energy? We do have to wait to see what we find out about this investigation. It could be as simple as a software error. It's probably one step in the transition between fossil fuels as many countries move towards renewables and a warning sign that if your power and your national grid relies more and more on renewable energy, there are weaknesses in the system and countries will have to develop robust systems in order to deal with that. But although Spain is a lead in renewable energy in Europe, it is not a global lead. China, for example, uses

much more renewable energy and clearly they do not have annual outages like this one. So it's not clear right now if it will lead to some sort of change in direction in terms of favouring renewables over fossil fuels. And I was talking to our environment correspondent Georgina Ranard there. The Palestinian Red Crescent says Israel has released a medic held since the attack on a convoy of ambulances in southern Gaza last month. Assad al-Nasr was detained during the Israeli operation which killed 15 emergency workers. Rebecca Kesby asked

Sebastian Asher in Jerusalem if the Israelis had explained why the medic had been held for so long. No, there's been no explanation so far. There's been no comment from Israel. It was the Palestinian Red Crescent which announced that Assad al-Nasajedra had been released and it was some weeks before it was known what had happened to him. There was an eyewitness during this incident on March 23rd, a survivor who said that he saw him being taken away, alive and blindfolded by Israeli soldiers and then nothing was heard from him. The Palestinian Red Crescent then a few weeks later said that they had information that he had been detained and was still in detention by Israel and that was confirmed. But how he was treated and why he was held for this amount of time,

no, we don't know that and he is not speaking as yet. He may speak later. And Seb, I mean it just sort of illustrates how this story of what happened keeps changing or at least it seems to be changing from how the Israelis are portraying what happened? Yes, I think many reporters, many Palestinians are saying, you know, this is a clear example in the cold light of day how misinformation is provided by the Israeli military and often goes uncontested. But in this case, the original story essentially was, as you were saying, that the Israeli soldiers had acted because they

saw vehicles coming in the darkness that seemed suspicious, that they didn't have their lights on, and that therefore they responded as if there might be some hostile entity there. This is in the southern city of Raff Rafah where there's been a resumption of fighting on quite a large scale. That was then proved to be incorrect by an extraordinary discovery on the mobile phone of one of the 15 who was killed, which the Palestinian Red Crescent then published, which showed the emergency workers in their uniforms with clearly marked

ambulances with their lights on being fired on by soldiers. So that essentially meant that the Israeli version didn't hold up. The Israelis then said that they were doing a fuller investigation. The result of that that they've published was to say that there had been some professional failures, but it didn't draw any real sense that the soldiers had acted in a way that was indiscriminate. I think that's the charge that the Palestinians often make, that the firing is indiscriminate. Certainly, they didn't acknowledge that, but they did acknowledge that the deputy commander of the unit had

not told the truth originally in what had happened so he was dismissed and the overall commander has been disciplined. Those are two quite rare occurrences but I think that there are still question marks over what happened and everyone is waiting to see now that he's been released if Assad will be able to provide more information. Sebastian Asher on the release of Assad at Nasasra. According to the World Health Organisation, about half of all vaccines end up in the bin, often because they can't be kept refrigerated in places where they're given out as jabs. Now, a vaccine that can be stored at room temperature, or even higher than that,

is being trialled here in the UK at University Hospital Southampton. The jab for tetanus and diphtheria has been developed by a biotech company called Stable Farm. So how does it work? The clinical trial is being led by Professor Saul Faust. What this British company have done is take technology that was developed I think originally at the University of Bath and find a way using a simple sugar to make some ordinary vaccines temperature stable, just by changing what we call the formulation. We've just started testing for the first time in humans the new tetanus diphtheria vaccine, the temperature stable vaccine, against the standard diphtheria tetanus vaccine that's identical apart from the formulation, so the refrigerated version of the same vaccine, and a second diphtheria tetanus vaccine. So we can compare two fridge vaccines, one of

which is identical to the test vaccine and this new temperature stable vaccine. This is really exciting because we've had an inkling this would be possible for some time, but it really is a new way of doing something that's coming to the clinic for the first time. So to have even some vaccines that can be used without needing a fridge or a freezer will be equivalent less refrigeration, less power. For the world, amazing for hot countries, For the world, amazing for hot countries, very isolated places to be able to have vaccines transported and delivered to them without needing the cold chain, without risk of it going bad. There's no reason why we shouldn't be able to go from minus 20 all the way up to way past 40 or even 50 degrees centigrade because the testing in the lab has suggested that it will

be robust at that temperature. People could put a backpack on and go to a village in the middle of nowhere, wouldn't need to worry, they could just take the vaccine and use it. So yeah, if this works and if it's then translated across a range of different vaccines in different companies it could really change the way we think about global health and getting vaccines into people. Professor Saul Faust, Now, fancy a drink? Bordeaux, the world's greatest wine region, has many superior white wines and rich red carrots that are true aristocrats.

A 1980s advert for fine French wine, but could you tell the difference between a glass of Chablis or cheap Plonk? More reporters for the newspaper Le Parisien went undercover to expose what they call wine fraud among some of the bistros and brasseries of the French capital. I heard more from our correspondent there Hugh Schofield. The reporter went out with a sommelier, someone who knows wine and they went to a series of bars up in Montmartre, touristy area, and the first three bars were fine. He said they got what they were offered basically. The sommelier said yes that is a Chablis, not a very good Chablis, but it's a

Chablis. But then they got to a particular bar, I think it was about the fourth on their list, and he said no that's not Chablis, that's a rather interesting Sauvignon Blanc, a generic wine of not very good quality. And then Le Parisien said okay and they went back to the same place a few days later with another sommelier and this time they asked for a Sancerre and again they got the same Sauvignon Blanc, nondescript, poor quality and it became clear that this was the sort of policy of the house. You know, and then anecdotally, they had interviews with various other people, anonymously, waiters who said, well, yes, this does go on.

There's even a French word for it, rempoté, which means to put a cheaper wine in the glass of a customer instead of the one that they've ordered. And, you know, nine times out of 10 ten they say they get away with it because most of the people in Montmartre in particular are tourists who don't really have a nose and don't really know the difference between a good wine and a less good one. Yeah, particularly when it comes in a glass rather than a bottle. Does this surprise you? Well, I mean, I think we need to sort of slightly keep it in perspective. I mean, they had need to slightly keep it in perspective.

I mean this, you know, they had to go looking for it. Wasn't that the first bar, you know, they is after several bars that were fine that they found this. It doesn't surprise me to be honest with you. I mean for a start we know that bars in Paris are, you know, really up against it. Their margins are so so tight. So it doesn't surprise me at all that there is a little bit of loose play, shall we say, on the part of some owners. And it doesn't surprise me either that your average customer, and I suspect quite a lot of French customers too, would fall for it, would not be able to tell that they were drinking Sauvignon Blanc instead of a Chablis or a Sans Cens. Hugh Schofield in Paris. We'll end this edition of the Global News podcast by returning to our main story, 100

days of Donald Trump's second presidency. On the campaign trail, he promised tough action to stop illegal migrants crossing from Mexico. As president, he has authorised what he called the largest deportation in American history. But what has happened to the people who've been thrown out? A handful of companies are actively recruiting deportees as employees, as Will Grant reports from the Mexican border city of Tijuana. Over a steady hum of activity, operators at the EZ call center in Tijuana work through long lists of US phone numbers. Some are making promotional calls

and sales, others are contacting customers about debt collection and refinancing. All the agents speak fluent English and the people at the other end of the line are none the wiser they're talking to agents in Mexico rather than the US. In fact virtually every phone operator in the company is a deportee, including EZ Call Centre's owner, Daniel Ruiz. We all are dealing with culture shock. We have all of our life over there, went to school over there, watched TV over there, brought up on American culture, and we have family over there. So it's like, we're from here and we're from over there too.

Born in Mexico, he grew up in the United States before he was deported for low-level drug crime in his early 20s. Today he runs the successful telesales company and co-founded a humanitarian organization called the Borderline Crisis Center, which provides food, shelter and support to deportees on their arrival in Mexico. When I got here to Mexico, I really felt lost. Everything's different, life is way faster. The latest U.S. returnee at the company is Alberto Salagan, who was deported to Tijuana in January, just as President Trump took office.

I just pretty much landed here by myself, no family, no nothing, no food, no clothes. So I had to do something to get back on my feet. And thanks to the call center, I have a job, you know? I will declare a national emergency at our southern border. Yeah. From day one, President Trump began taking steps towards what he calls the largest deportation

in American history. He's spoken often of the removal of hundreds of thousands even millions of undocumented people from US soil and in the early days of his presidency ICE immigration agents made workplace raids from Chicago to California. So far though evidence of a mass deportation such as bottlenecks of migrants at border crossings or overflowing migrant hostels, hasn't materialised, at least not in Tijuana. I'm at the San Ysidro border crossing, one of the busiest international border crossings in the world that links Mexico to the United States.

For so many deportees, being returned to Tijuana with the United States still visible on the other side of the border is a harrowing experience. Some haven't lived in this country since they were children or even babies. Nevertheless, some companies have found distinct advantages to employing deportees as staff members. So we're looking at where our agents work. This is the main area for... In particular one company, the American Survey Company or ASC, stands out. It's one thing for a smaller venture like Easy Call Centre to rely on deportees, but

ASC and its sister company Vox Centrics have some 550 call center stations in Tijuana. Whatever happened in the US stays in the US. We don't really do background checks regarding that. Nora Diaz is the chief happiness officer at the company. Basically, she says, an HR officer concerned with the employees' well-being. We understand that there's a past, everybody has a past. We just need people who speak good English, good Spanish, and they're willing to learn and commit to a job.

So far, the Trump administration's threat of mass deportation remains exactly that, a threat. But it has become a powerful tool in dissuading migrants from even attempting to cross into the US. Will Grant reporting from Tijuana. And that is all from us for now but the Global News podcast will be back very soon. Just time to remind you that we're planning a special Q&A edition ahead of the Papal Conclave, answering your questions about how the new Pope is chosen. We'll look at the process, the timetable and

the likely candidates to succeed Pope Francis and look at the process, the timetable and the likely candidates to succeed Pope Francis and what it could mean for the Catholic Church. So send us your questions in a voicemail or email to globalpodcast.bbc.co.uk. This edition was mixed by Caroline Driscoll and produced by Peter Hyatt. Our editors Karen Martin, I'm Oliver Conway. Until next time, goodbye.