2025-01-04
26 分钟This BBC podcast is supported by ads.
Outside the uk hello, welcome to World Business Report from the BBC World Service.
I'm Ed Butler, and on today's edition, we're going to be hearing from Syria as it destroys what had been its number one cash export, highly addictive amphetamines.
Here in this place, the general security now are burning big amounts of, like, Captagon or marijuana or any other drugs.
How does Syria pay its way in future, though?
We're asking also in the show, could Slovakia really be about to switch off Ukraine's electricity supply and taxing trash?
Why?
Europe's metal recycling industry could become a casualty of Donald Trump's tariffs.
But we start today's program in the United States, where President Biden has blocked the takeover of US Steel.
It is the nation's third, third biggest steel maker.
It was due to be taken over by the Japanese company Nippon Steel.
But in a written statement, the president said that a strong domestically owned and operated steel industry represents an essential national security priority.
This is because steel powers our country, he said, and without domestic steel production and domestic steel workers, our nation is less strong and less secure.
Well, President elect Donald Trump has already echoed that view on his social media accounts.
Nippon Steel had been prepared to pay nearly $15 billion for the American steel giant.
But Terry Haines, a spokesman for Pangaea Policy in Washington, believes the decision will have wider diplomatic consequences.
One of the things that's difficult about this decision was that, you know, Japan's a very close US Ally.
There's never been a public breath to suggest that Nippon Steel ownership would cause United States national security problems.
So the government's got a, frankly, a big evidentiary burden here in order to justify what they're doing today.
And it hurts, you know, it hurts bilateral relations with Japan.