2025-08-01
26 分钟Hello, welcome to World Business Report from the BBC World Service.
My name's Ed Butler.
In today's show, we're going to be counting down the hours to the August 1st deadline.
That's the one that Donald Trump has set for countries to do a deal or to face much higher tariffs.
In recent days, South Korea, Japan,
the European Union and many others have announced framework trade deals to avoid the worst of the tax hikes.
But a large number of other countries have not.
And we're running through those seemingly still in the firing line.
We'll be asking, who's really winning this trade war?
The US?
China?
Who are the losers?
It's the smaller and medium-sized companies that are really suffering so far,
for which reason the chamber has called for tariff relief for smaller businesses.
Well, we'll be hearing from businesses and from several countries around the world in a minute.
But first, let's start with the big picture.
Dozens of countries remain in limbo as we speak.
With only hours to go before President Trump's trade deal deadline,
tariffs as much as 50% could be set to snap into effect at midnight tonight,
US Eastern Standard Time.