2025-05-09
26 分钟Hello and welcome to World Business Report from the BBC World Service.
I'm Roger Hearing and on this edition, the UK cuts a deal with the US on trade.
But is it as important as Donald Trump and Keir Starmer say it is?
There's a new Pope.
How will Leo XIV tackle the financial problems gripping the Vatican?
Also,
the Spanish Parliament about to debate a law to reduce the working week by two and a half hours.
A good idea?
What is a very bad idea is to put the same working time for all the wage bargaining.
By introducing this law, it's a very bad idea and very inefficient.
And Bill Gates wants to give away his fortune before he dies.
How easy is it to make his billions of dollars achieve what he wants for the world's poorest?
But let's start with the trade deal between the US and the UK.
When Donald Trump launched his head-spinning run of tariff imposition and tariff suspension,
it was billed as a way of resetting unfair trading arrangements,
of forcing nations he said were taking the US for a ride to strike new and fairer deals.
Well, the UK seems to be the first American trade partner to have completed that journey.
The President and the British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, have jointly announced an agreement.
President Trump said the agreement will provide increased market access for American exports worth billions of dollars,
especially products like American beef and ethanol.